13. There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a fiend,*
This miserable knight;
14. And that, unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;
15. And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain,
And ever strove to expiate*
That scorn that crazed his brain;
16. And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay.
17. His dying words-But when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,*
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
LITERARY ANALYSIS.-49, 50. There came... bright. Transpose into the piose order, and point out which effects are obtained by the use of the poetic order.
51, 52. Point out an instance of pleonasm in these lines.
57-59. Note the employment of the conjunction and to introduce each clause.'
63. yellow. What does the use of this epithet suggest?
65. His dying words. Note the sudden pause by which the conclusion is left unexpressed. What is this figure of speech called? (See Def. 88.)
1 The employment of conjunctions to an unusual degree is sometimes made a distinct figure of speech under the name of polysyndeton.
18. All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
19. And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!
20. She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love and virgin shame;
And, like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.
21. Her bosom heaved-she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.
22. She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And, bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
23. 'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.
24. I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous bride.
LITERARY ANALYSIS.—71-76. In the enumeration of details in these lines, which particulars are to be classed as “impulses of soul," and which as “impulses of sense?"
74. undistinguishable throng. Explain.
75, 76. subdued, Subdued. Notice the use of the same word at the end of one phrase and at the beginning of another.1
'This is sometimes made a distinct figure under the name of anadiplosis.
II. MORNING HYMN TO MONT BLANC.
1. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
2. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.
3. Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
4. Thou first and chief, sole Sovran of the Vale!
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's ROSY STAR, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
5. And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded—and the silence came— "Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?"
6. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet?
"GOD!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer; and let the ice-plains echo, "GOD!"
"GOD!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "GOD!"
7. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth "GOD!" and fill the hills with praise.
8. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peak,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain, thou
That, as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,
Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me-rise, O, ever rise;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth.
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!
|