Oh, you and I have heard our fathers say

There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
Th' eternal Devil to keep his state in Rome

As easily as a king!

SHAKESPEARE.

VERY LOUD.

And now before the open door-
The warrior priest had ordered so
The enlisting trumpet's sudden roar
Rang through the chapel, o'er and o'er.
Its long reverberating blow,

So loud and clear, it seemed the ear
Of dusty death must wake and hear.
And there the startling drum and fife
Fired the living with fiercer life;
While overhead, with wild increase,
Forgetting its ancient toll of peace,

The great bell swung as ne'er before.
It seemed as it would never cease;
And every word its ardor flung
From off its jubilant iron tongue

Was, "WAR! WAR! WAR!"

T. B. READ.

Then wakes the power which in the age of iron Bursts forth to curb the great, and raise the low. Mark, where she stands around her form I draw The awful circle of our solemn church!

Set but a foot within that holy ground,

And on thy head yea, though it wore a crown
I launch the curse of Rome.

On, on, you noblest English,

BULWER

Whose blood is fetched from fathers of war proof! Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders,

Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot;
Follow your spirits, and, upon this charge,

Cry, Heaven for Harry! England! and St. George!

SHAKESPEARE.

PITCH.

PITCH is the elevation given to the voice. High pitch being used in the expressions of acute feelings of joy and grief, pain, fear, delight, and astonishment.

Middle pitch should be used in the expression of moderate emotion and unimpassioned language, simple narration, &c. Low pitch is used in expressing awe, reverence, sublimity, deep and settled feeling.

Very low is employed in expressions of deep solemnity, grandeur, vastness, &c.

HIGH.

Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,

Over the mountain-side or mead,

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers.
Chee, chee, chee.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

BRYANT.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

TENNYSON.

What a world of merriment their melody foretells,
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle

In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

РОЕ.

Oh! Then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She comes,

In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses, as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat:

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,

Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

SHAKESPEARE.

Middle.

The books which help you most are those which make you think most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker, is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

THEO. PARKER.

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

GRAY

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries:
On such a full sea are we now afloat

And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our venture.

SHAKESPEARE.

I mourn no more my vanished years:

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears

My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low

I hear the glad streams run,

The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

WHITTIER.

It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them. IRVING

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.

ADDISON.

Low.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

BRYANT.