In the following examples, the same word is used as several parts of speech. But by exercising judgment sufficient to comprehend the meaning, and by supplying what is understood, you will be able to analyze them correctly.
EXERCISES IN PARSING.
- I like what you dislike.
- Every creature loves its like.
- Anger, envy, and like passions, are sinful.
- Charity, like the sun, brightens every object around it.
- Thought flies swifter than light.
- He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.
- Hail often proves destructive to vegetation.
- I was happy to hail him as my friend.
- Hail! beauteous stranger of the wood.
- The more I examine the work, the better I like it.
- Johnson is a better writer than Sterne.
- Calm was the day, and the scene delightful.
- We may expect a calm after a storm.
- To prevent passion is easier than to calm it.
- Damp air is unwholesome.
- Guilt often casts a damp over our sprightliest hours.
- Soft bodies damp the sound much more than hard ones.
- Much money has been expended.
- Of him to whom much is given, much will be required.
- It is much better to give than to receive.
- Still water runs deep. He labored to still the tumult.
- Those two young profligates remain still in the wrong.
- They wrong themselves as well as their friends.
I will now present to you a few examples in poetry. Parsing in poetry, as it brings into requisition a higher degree of mental exertion than parsing in prose, will be found a more delightful and profitable exercise. In this kind of analysis, in order to come at the meaning of the author, you will find it necessary to transpose his language, and supply what is understood; and then you will have the literal meaning in prose.
EXERCISES IN PARSING.
APOSTROPHE TO HOPE.—CAMPBELL.
Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time,
Thy joyous youth began:—but not to fade.—
When all the sister planets have decayed;
When wrapt in flames the realms of ether glow,
And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below;
Thou, undismay'd, shalt o'er the ruins smile,
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile!
TRANSPOSED.
Eternal Hope! thy joyous youth began when yonder sublime spheres pealed their first notes to sound the march of time:—but it began not to fade.—Thou, undismayed, shalt smile over the ruins, when all the sister planets shall have decayed; and thou shalt light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile, when wrapt in flames, the realms of ether glow, and Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below.