Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle-horns,
They mesmerized and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And, with whispered laughter, slipped away
And left him hanging there.
We can hardly overestimate the value of a careful study of the lyric to the student of expressive speech. It demands superior powers to render a lyric adequately. Bertha Kuntz Baker, the great American reader, thus suggestively writes on this subject:
To clarify the diction, go over the poem, word by word, conform each word carefully, repeatedly to your ideal of that word, giving the vowel its fullest possible value, tucking in the consonants as clear, light envelopes around and between the vowels.