Composition-Rhetoric Part 36

Into the sunshine, Full of light, Leaping and flashing From morn to night!

--Lowell.

_B._ Name each verse in the following stanza:--

Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells!

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.

--Poe.

+117. Kinds of Poetry.+-There are three general cla.s.ses of poetry: narrative, lyric, and dramatic.

_A. Narrative poetry_, as may be inferred from its name, relates events which may be either real or imaginary. Its chief varieties are the epic, the metrical romance or lesser epic, the tale, and the ballad.

_An epic_ poem is an extended narrative of an elevated character that deals with heroic exploits which are frequently under supernatural control. This kind of poetry is characterized by the intricacy of plot, by the delineation of n.o.ble types of character, by its descriptive effects, by its elevated language, and by its seriousness of tone. The epic is considered as the highest effort of man's poetic genius. It is so difficult to produce an epic that but few literatures contain more than one. Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, Virgil's _Aeneid_, the German _Nibelungenlied_, the Spanish _Cid_, Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Milton's _Paradise Lost_ are important epics found in different literatures.

A _metrical romance_ or lesser epic is a narrative poem, shorter and less dignified than the epic. Longfellow's _Evangeline_ and Scott's _Marmion_ and _Lady of the Lake_ are examples of this kind of poetry.

_A metrical tale is_ a narrative poem somewhat simpler and shorter than the metrical romance, but more complex than the ballad. Longfellow's _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_, and Lowell's _Vision of Sir Launfal_ are examples of the tale.

_A ballad_ is the shortest and most simple of all narrative poems. It relates but a single incident and has a very simple structure. In this kind of poetry the interest centers upon the incident rather than upon any beauty or elegance of language. Many of the Robin Hood Ballads are well known. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and Longfellow's _Wreck of the Hesperus_ are other examples of the ballad. It may be well to note here that it is not always possible to draw definite lines between two different kinds of narrative poetry. In fact, there will sometimes be a difference of opinion as regards the cla.s.sification.

_B. Lyric poetry_ was the name originally applied to poetry that was to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, but now the name is often applied to poems that are not intended to be sung at all. Lyric poetry deals primarily with the feelings and emotions. Love, hate, jealousy, grief, hope, and praise are emotions that may be expressed in lyric poetry. Its chief varieties are the song, the ode, the elegy, and the sonnet.

A _song_ is a short poem intended to be sung. Songs may be divided into sacred and secular. _Jerusalem, the Golden_, and _Lead, Kindly Light_, are examples of sacred songs. Secular songs may be patriotic, convivial, or sentimental.

An _ode_ expresses exalted emotion and is more complex in structure than the song. Some of the best odes in our language are Dryden's _Ode to St.

Cecilia_, Wordsworth's _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_, Keats's _Ode on a Grecian Urn_, Sh.e.l.ley's _Ode to a Skylark_, and Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_.

An _elegy_ is a lyric pervaded by the feeling of grief or melancholy.

Milton's _Lycidas_, Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, and Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ are all noted elegies.

A _sonnet_ is a lyric poem of fourteen lines which deals with a single idea or sentiment. It is not a stanza taken from a poem, but is a complete poem itself. In the Italian sonnet and those modeled after it, the emotional feeling rises through the first two quatrains, reaching its climax at or near the end of the eighth line, and then subsides through the two tercets which make up the remaining six lines. If the sentiment expressed does not adjust itself to this ebb and flow, it is not suitable for a sonnet. Milton's sonnet on his blindness is one of the best. Notice the emotional transition in the middle of the eighth line. This sonnet will also ill.u.s.trate the fixed rhyme scheme:--

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he, returning, chide; Doth G.o.d exact day labor, light denied?

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, G.o.d doth not need, Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.

There is a form of sonnet called the Shakespearean which differs in its arrangement from the Italian sonnet.

_C. Dramatic poetry_ relates the occurrence of human events, and is designed to be spoken on the stage. If the drama has an unhappy ending, it is _a tragedy_. As is becoming in such a theme, the language is dignified and impressive, and the whole appeals to our deeper emotions. If the drama has a happy conclusion, it is _a comedy_. Here the movement is quicker, the language less dignified, and the effort is to make the whole light and amusing.

PART II

Description, Narration, Exposition, and Argument have been treated in an elementary way in Part I. A more extensive treatment of each is given in Part II. It has been deemed undesirable to repeat in Part II many things which have been previously treated. The treatment of any one of the forms of discourse as given in Part II is not complete. By reference to the index all the sections treating of any phase of any one subject may be found.

[Ill.u.s.tration: See page 224, _C._]

VIII. DESCRIPTION

+118. Description Defined.+--By means of our senses we gain a knowledge of the world. We see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; and the ideas so acquired are the fundamental elements of our knowledge, without which thinking would be impossible. It, therefore, happens that much of the language that we use has for its purpose the transmission to others of such ideas. Such writing is called description. We may, therefore, define description as that form of discourse which has for its purpose the formation of an image.

As here used, the term _image_ applies to any idea presented by the senses. In a more limited sense it means the mental picture which is formed by aid of sight. It is for the purpose of presenting images of this kind that description is most often employed. It is most frequently concerned with images of objects seen, less frequently with sounds, and seldom with ideas arising through touch, taste, and smell. In this chapter, therefore, we shall consider chiefly the methods of using language for the purpose of arousing images of objects seen.

+119. Order of Observation.+--In description we shall find it of advantage to use such language that the reader will form the image in the same way as he would form an image from actual observation. There is a customary and natural order of observation, and if we present our material in that same order, the mind more easily forms the desired image. Our first need in the study of description is to determine what this natural order of observation is.

Look at the building across the street. Your _first_ impression is that of size, shape, and color. Almost instantly, but nevertheless _secondly_, you add certain details as to roof, door, windows, and surroundings. Further observation adds to the number of details, such as the size of the window panes or the pattern of the lattice work. Our first glance may a.s.sure us that we see a train, our second will tell us how many cars, our third will show us that each car is marked Michigan Central. The oftener we look or the longer we look, the greater is the number of details of which we become conscious. Any number of ill.u.s.trations will show that we first see the general outline, and after that the details. We do not observe the details one by one and then combine them into an object, but we first see the object as a whole, and our first impression becomes more vivid as we add detail after detail.

Following this natural order of observation a description should begin with a sentence that will give the reader a general impression of the whole. Notice the beginnings of the following selections. After reading the italicized sentence in each, consider the image that it has caused you to form.

The door opened upon the main or living room. _It was a long apartment with low ceiling and walls of hewn logs c.h.i.n.ked and plastered and all beautifully whitewashed and clean._ The tables, chairs, and benches were all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox, and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and gra.s.ses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room, smaller, and richly furnished with relics of former grandeur.

--Connor: _The Sky Pilot_.

_The stranger was of middle height, loosely knit and thin, with a cunning, brutal face._ He had a bullet-shaped head, with fine, soft, reddish brown hair; a round, stubbly beard shot with gray; and small, beady eyes set close together. He was clothed in an old, black, grotesquely fitting cutaway coat, with coa.r.s.e trousers tucked into his boot tops. A worn visored cloth cap was on his head. In his right hand he carried an old muzzle-loading shotgun.

--George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's").

+120. The Fundamental Image.+--The first impression of the object as a whole is called the fundamental image. The beginning of a description should cause the reader to form a correct general outline, which will include the main characteristics of the object described. While the fundamental image lacks definiteness and exactness, yet it must be such that it shall not need to be revised as we add the details. If one should begin a description by saying, "Opposite the church there is a large two-story, brick house with a conservatory on the left," the reader would form at once a mental picture including the essential features of the house. Further statements about the roof, the windows, the doors, the porch, the yard, and the fence, would each add something to the picture until it was complete. The impression with which the reader started would be added to, but not otherwise changed. But if we should conclude the description with the statement, "This house was distinguished from its neighbors by the fact that it was not of the usual rectangular form, but was octagonal in shape," the reader would find that the image which he had formed would need to be entirely changed. It is evident that if the word _octagonal_ is to appear at all, it must be at the beginning. Care must be taken to place all the words that affect the fundamental image in the sentence that gives the general characteristics of that which we are describing.

Hawthorne begins _The House of the Seven Gables_ as follows:--

Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compa.s.s, and a huge, cl.u.s.tered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon street; the house is the old Pyncheon house; and an elm tree, of wide circ.u.mference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the t.i.tle of the Pyncheon elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon street, for the sake of pa.s.sing through the shadow of these two antiquities,--the great elm tree and the weather-beaten edifice.

Later he gives a detailed description of the house on the morning of its completion as follows:--

Maule's lane, or Pyncheon street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which was henceforth to a.s.sume its rank among the habitations of mankind.

There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of the street, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, pebbles, and bits of gla.s.s, with which the woodwork of the walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney. The many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms.

Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the pa.s.sage of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which the gra.s.s had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make among men's daily interests.