INFLECTION.
Inflection is a slide of voice, either up or down in pitch, or both, on the accented syllable of a word. You have learned in previous pages what kinds there are. Major inflections express strength: minor express weakness.
Rising inflections refer to something to come that shall complete the sense. If you speak a phrase that needs another to complete its meaning, you will use a rising inflection to connect them. If you defer to another's will, opinion, or knowledge, in what you say, you will use a rising inflection. If you speak of two or more things, thinking of them as a whole, and not separately, you use a rising inflection.
Falling inflections are used when a phrase or sentence is complete in itself. If you state your own will, opinion, or knowledge, you will use falling inflection. If you speak of two or more things separately, wishing to make each one by itself distinct in the hearer's mind, you will use falling inflections.
Circumflex inflections, being composed of rising and falling inflections combined, are doubtful in meaning; for if rising means one thing, and falling means another, a combination must mean doubt. It expresses irony, sarcasm, &c.
Monotone is a varying of inflection within very narrow limits, and comes as near to chanting as the voice can, and still retain the expressiveness of inflection in speech. It expresses any slow-moving emotions, as grandeur, awe, solemnity, &c.
Practise the short extracts under each head until you are sure you give the right inflection in the right place.
MAJOR RISING INFLECTION.
1. Would the influence of the Bible, even if it were not the record of a divine revelation, be to render princes more tyrannical, or subjects more ungovernable; the rich more insolent, or the poor more disorderly? Would it make worse parents or children, husbands or wives, masters or servants, friends or neighbors?
2. But why pause here? Is so much ambition praiseworthy, and more criminal? Is it fixed in nature that the limits of this empire should be Egypt on the one hand, the Hellespont and Euxine on the other? Were not Suez and Armenia more natural limits? Or hath empire no natural limit, but is broad as the genius that can devise, and the power that can win?
3. Shine they for aught but earth,
These silent stars?
And, when they sprang to birth,
Who broke the bars
And let their radiance out
To kindle space,
When rang God's morning shout
O'er the glad race?
Are they all desolate,
These silent stars;
Hung in their spheres by fate,
Which nothing mars?
Or are they guards of God,
Shining in prayer,
On the same path they've trod
Since light was there?
MAJOR FALLING INFLECTIONS.
1. Stand up erect! Thou hast the form
And likeness of thy God: who more?
A soul as dauntless mid the storm
Of daily life, a heart as warm
And pure, as breast e'er wore.
2. Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum;
See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair,
As children from a bear, the Voices shunning him;
Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus,—
Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear,
Though you were born in Rome: his bloody brow
With his mailed hand then wiping, forth he goes,
Like to a harvest-man that's tasked to mow
Or all, or lose his hire.
3. Mahomet still lives in his practical and disastrous influence in the East. Napoleon still is France, and France is almost Napoleon. Martin Luther's dead dust sleeps at Wittenberg; but Martin Luther's accents still ring through the churches of Christendom. Shakspeare, Byron, and Milton, all live in their influence,—for good or evil. The apostle from his chair, the minister from his pulpit, the martyr from his flame-shroud, the statesman from his cabinet, the soldier in the field, the sailor on the deck, who all have passed away to their graves, still live in the practical deeds that they did, in the lives they lived, and in the powerful lessons that they left behind them.
MINOR RISING INFLECTIONS.
1. "Let me see him once before he dies? Let me hear his voice once more? I entreat you, let me enter."
2. Stay, lady, stay, for mercy's sake,
And hear a helpless orphan's tale!
Ah! sure my looks must pity wake:
'Tis want that makes my cheek so pale.
Yet I was once a mother's pride,
And my brave father's hope and joy;
But in the Nile's proud fight he died,
And I am now an orphan-boy.
3. They answer, "Who is God that he should hear us
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping, any more?"
MINOR FALLING INFLECTIONS.
1. God forbid that we should outlive the love of our children! Rather let us die while their hearts are a part of our own, that our grave may be watered with their tears, and our love linked with their hopes of heaven.
2. Her suffering ended with the day;
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.
But, when the sun in all his state
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through glory's morning-gate,
And walked in paradise.
3. Father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek;
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit:
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.
CIRCUMFLEX INFLECTION.
1. Were I in England now (as once I was), and had but this fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man: any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.
2. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple.
3."Hold, there!" the other quick replies:
"'Tis green: I saw it with these eyes,
As late with open mouth it lay,
And warmed it in the sunny ray.
Stretched at its ease, the beast I viewed,
And saw it eat the air for food."
"I've seen it, sir, as well as you,
And must again affirm it blue:
At leisure I the beast surveyed,
Extended in the cooling shade."
"'Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye!"
"Green!" cries the other in a fury:
"Why, sir! d'ye think I've lost my eyes?"
"'Twere no great loss," the friend replies;
"For, if they always serve you thus,
You'll find them of but little use."
MONOTONE.
1. When for me the silent oar
Parts the Silent River,
And I stand upon the shore
Of the strange Forever,
Shall I miss the loved and known?
Shall I vainly seek mine own?
2. Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light!
Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night!
And thou, effulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed,
My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid.
Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode,
The pavement of those heavenly courts where I shall reign with God.
3. Father of earth and heaven, I call thy name!
Round me the smoke and shout of battle roll;
My eyes are dazzled with the rustling flame:
Father, sustain an untried soldier's soul.
Or life or death, whatever be the goal
That crowns or closes round this struggling hour,
Thou know'st, if ever from my spirit stole
One deeper prayer, 'twas that no cloud might lower
On my young fame. Oh, hear, God of eternal power!