Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers ARTEVELDE'S. FAREWELL TO THE CITIZENS OF GHENT. Then fare ye well, ye citizens of Ghent! Henry Taylor Which never no not once- in any of you DARKNESS. 1 had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Ray less and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Byron. Morn came, and went, and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions, in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light. And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings, the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up, With mad disquietude, on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses, cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth, and howl'd. The wild birds shriek d And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought— and that was death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men Died; and their bones were tombless as their flesh: The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay, Of an enormous city did survive, But two And they were enemies. They met beside The dying embers of an altar-place, Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage. They raked up, And shivering, scraped, with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery. Then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects - saw, and shriek'd, and died; Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void: A lump of death, - a chaos of hard clay. And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths. Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd, They slept on the abyss, without a surge, The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave; The moon, their mistress, had expired before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; darkness had no need Of aid from them - she was the universe. PITCH, Continued. The various degrees of pitch may be thus represented: Very high High Middle Low á-à-delightful, joyous, glorious. "That, in the formation of language, men have been much influenced by a regard to the nature of things and actions meant to be represented, is a fact of which every known speech gives proof. In our own language, for instance, who does not perceive in the sound of the words thunder, boundless, terrible, a something appropriate to the sublime ideas intended to be conveyed? In the word crash we hear the very action implied. Imp, elf,— how descriptive of the miniature beings to which we apply them! Fairy,how light and tripping, just like the fairy herself!—the word, no more than the thing, seems fit to bend the grass-blade, or shake the tear from the blue-eyed flower."- Robert Chalmers. Examples. Very High Pitch. "There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit and a smile on the flower, "Ring joyous chords!-ring out again! A swifter still and a wilder strain! And bring fresh wreaths! - we will banish all Save the free in heart from our festive hall. On through the maze of the fleet dance, on!". - Mrs. Hemans. "On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet." — Byron. High Pitch. "A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, F "I come! I come! ye have called me long, "From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain, Middle Pitch. "Thought is deeper than all speech; Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach Mrs. Hemans. What unto themselves is taught."-C. P. Cranch. "Be wise; not easily forgiven Are those, who, setting wide the doors that bar The secret bridal chambers of the heart, Let in the day." — Tennyson. "All the past of Time reveals A bridal-dawn of thunder-peals, Whenever Thought hath wedded Fact." - Ibid. Low Pitch. "Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, And the winter winds are wearily sighing: Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, And tread softly and speak low, For the old year lies a-dying."-Tennyson. "Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'T was sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea."- Coleridge. "His heavy-shotted hammock shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave." - Tennyson. |