Expression: Read again the four descriptive selections beginning on page [179]. Observe the wide difference in style of composition. Of the three prose extracts, which is the most interesting to you? Give reasons why this is so. Which passages require the most animation in reading? Read these passages so that those who are listening to you may fully appreciate their meaning.
THE POET AND THE BIRD
I. The Song of the Lark
On a pleasant evening in late summer the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary Shelley, were walking near the city of Leghorn in Italy. The sky was cloudless, the air was soft and balmy, and the earth seemed hushed into a restful stillness. The green lane along which they were walking was bordered by myrtle hedges, where crickets were softly chirping and fireflies were already beginning to light their lamps. From the fields beyond the hedges the grateful smell of new-mown hay was wafted, while in the hazy distance the church towers of the city glowed yellow in the last rays of the sun, and the gray-green sea rippled softly in the fading light of day.
Suddenly, from somewhere above them, a burst of music fell upon their ears. It receded upward, but swelled into an ecstatic harmony, with fluttering intervals and melodious swervings such as no musician's art can imitate.
"What is that?" asked the poet, as the song seemed to die away in the blue vault of heaven.
"It is a skylark," answered his wife.
"Nay," said the poet, his face all aglow with the joy of the moment; "no mere bird ever poured forth such strains of music as that. I think, rather, that it is some blithe spirit embodied as a bird."
"Let us imagine that it is so," said Mary. "But, hearken. It is singing again, and soaring as it sings."