NIGHT

ROBERT SOUTHEY

Here is a beautiful description of a clear night. Such nights have been over and around many millions of persons who, however, have never actually seen the night as the poet sees it. That is, they look at it, but do not see it. He sees it, and by his poem, he helps us to see it. Thus a poet is a very real and a very true

teacher.

Now read this short poem over in silence and very slowly, trying to see what he describes. Then return to this place and read on from here.

First, can you shut your eyes and be in the night? Can you feel a cool "dewy freshness"? If not, the next fine night, go out into the night, and try to feel it.

Now try to see the sky, without mist, or cloud, or speck, or stain, absolutely clear. Shut your eyes and try to see such a

sky.

Now read lines 5 and 6. Again shut your eyes, and add the moon to your picture, a round moon, "full-orb'd."

Lines 7, 8, and 9 mean that the sky beneath and around the moon, being clear of all marks, — of mist, or cloud, or speck, or stain-is a "desert-circle," like the round or convex ocean, "girdled" or surrounded with the sky.

Now, having seen all this, tell it to your classmates in the words of the poem. You have "read well" if they have seen all this. It is a good thing to stop and ask your classmates, "Do you

see this?

read it over.

If they do not, try again to make them see it as you

If you will do this, you will at once see that, ordinarily, you read much too fast for the minds of your classmates to see the pictures at all. For example, take line 3 of the poem. It has four pictures, and at each one your hearers must have time a moment for each picture or else they will not see any of them. Read it thus:

"No mist obscures,

Nor cloud,

Nor speck,

for a speck.)

Nor stain,

(Wait here a moment.)

(Give time to see this.)

(Let your hearers have time to look the sky over

(Give time.)

Breaks the serene (the even calm) of Heaven."

You will never really read that is, make others see and understand unless you are seeing and understanding as you read.

5

10

NIGHT

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of Heaven;

In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

Robert Southey (south'ĩ), the author of the poem "Night,” was born at Bristol, England, August 12, 1774. He wrote many volumes of poems, but only a small portion of his poetry was of high order. His prose is much better than his poetry. He wrote a large number of books, his prose works alone filling almost forty volumes. He was a close friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Southey died March 21, 1843.

The night is calm and cloudless,

And still as still can be,

And the stars come forth to listen
To the music of the sea.
They gather, and gather, and gather,

Until they crowd the sky,
And listen, in breathless silence,

To the solemn litany.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

CHARLES SPRAGUE

This beautiful description of the passing out of the North American Indians from the eastern part of the United States is part of an oration by Charles Sprague, a famous orator of Boston.

To read it understandingly, you will have to picture the following:

1. A country, thickly settled by white people, with farms and cities, and all other evidences of civilization.

2. A great meeting of white people, with an orator delivering this oration.

3. Then the scene that he describes or tells about,
same country occupied only by Indians, no farms, no
the
cities, only roving red men, wigwams, hunting, and
Indian life as it was three hundred years ago.

As you read each sentence, you will see that the orator draws wonderful pictures with his words, scenes that would make wonderful moving pictures on a screen, the deer hunt, the Indian lovers, the scene in a wigwam, the canoe on a lake, the battle, the death-song scene of a captive brave, and so on.

Then the coming of the white men and their conquest of the Indians, till the Indians disappeared into the Far West.

Then in ages to come, the inquisitive white man wondering about these early inhabitants of New England.

Take time as you read, trying to see every picture and to understand every thought.

That you may feel the spell of the beautiful language, do not fail, after you have fully understood the lesson, to read it aloud as you imagine the orator spoke it.

Before reading the selection learn the meanings of the following words:

or the power, that rules over everything.

generation: the average life-| God of the universe: the deity, time of a certain set of persons, about a third of a century. exalts (ĕg-zôltz'): uplifts or makes better, higher, or finer. embellishes: makes beautiful. wigwam : an Indian tent or lodge. sedgy lakes: lakes in which

are water plants resembling

long, coarse grass.

sacred orb the sun.
timid warbler: the singing bird.
a spark of that light to whose
mysterious source: the spirit
of man, or the soul, given the
Indian by his Manitou.
blind adoration: worship for
which the worshiper knows
no particular reason.

echoing whoop: the war cry of a pilgrim bark: the Mayflower,

the Indians.

death-song: the song of triumph
chanted by an Indian warrior
while dying.
tiger-strife: fierce combat.
Great Spirit: Manitou (măn'i-

which brought the "Pilgrim Fathers." The coming of the Mayflower was the beginning of the end of the Indian as an heroic character.

seeds of life and death: life for

the white man, death for the Indian.

too), the god of the Indians. tables of stone: referring to the "tables of stone" on which anointed children of education: were written the ten com- civilized men. mandments that Moses gave to the Jews.

God of Revelation: God, as

progenitors: parents, ancestors, or those of the same race who lived at an earlier time.

told of, or "revealed," in the falcon glance: the quick, bold

Bible.

glance of the falcon or hawk.