And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?—Emerson.
'Twas twilight and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.—Byron.
And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost—
What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast,
And view the enormous waste of vapor, tossed
In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed,
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!
Beattie.
Note
In addition to the foregoing poetical selections, those previously given may be analyzed with reference to form, content, and mood. Their beauty or excellence will now be more clearly understood. Furthermore, it is recommended that the teacher assign brief poems, either from our standard authors or from current literature, for full analysis and criticism. The blank verse of Tennyson, Shelley, Milton, and Shakespeare might be investigated and compared at considerable length in order to determine the average length of their sentences, the place of the cæsural pause, and the proportion of "end-stopt" or "run-on" lines.
