But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home, and my folks were growing old. Take me out, sink me deep in the green profound, To sway with the long-weed, swing with the drowned, Where the change of the soft tide makes no sound, Far below the keels of the outward bound.
For the same reason such poems as The Day is Done, (p. [63]) and Part IV, of The Lady of Shalott, (p. [200]) are read with gentle force.
A change in force often accompanies a change in pitch. The lower pitch of parenthetical expressions, and narrative clauses which interrupt direct discourse, is accompanied by weaker force, and the higher pitch resulting from the efforts to make one's self heard at a distance is accompanied by stronger force.
Stress is force applied to the vowel sound. When we are taken by surprise and give expression to it by means of the one word "Oh," we apply the force or volume of the voice to the beginning of the vowel sound. This is called initial or radical stress (>) to a statement, or to insist on a refusal to some persistent request we say "No," gradually increasing the force of the voice to the last part of the vowel sound. This is called final or vanishing stress (<). Again, if our minds are uplifted with wonder and delight at something we have heard or seen, we exclaim "Oh" applying the force to the middle of the vowel sound. This swell of the vowel sound is called median stress (<>).
It has already been pointed out that force depends upon the amount of energy. The above examples show that stress or the location of force depends upon the kind of mental energy, or the attitude of mind, whether it be that of abruptness, of insistence, or of uplift.
All speech has a slight tendency toward initial stress, because the effort made by the vocal chords to articulate sound is characterized by abruptness. If, in addition, the mental energy of the speaker possesses abruptness through sudden impulse or emotion, or through unconscious imitation of sound or movement, the initial stress is very prominent:
Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on?— You, sir, what trade are you?
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
If the speaker desires to impress on others his own feelings or convictions, the final stress is the result. Such insistence is found in the expression of anger, scorn, indignation, and determination: