which discredits our heroes.1 Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her.

We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication 2 and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us! The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles.

4

Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature.

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober 5 and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and native We come to our own and make friends with

to us.

1 discredits our heroes: that is, makes their deeds seem less heroic than they had appeared.

2 sophistication, false views.

3 spells, magical charms.

4 incommunicable. Explain the meaning of the word as here used.

5 sober, give us serious thoughts.

matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools1 would persuade us to despise. We nestle 2 in nature, and draw our living, as parasites,3 from her roots and grains; and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture.

4

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving ryefield; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south wind, which converts all trees to wind-harps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-room, —

1 the schools, philosophers and theorists. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 8.)

5 Uriel, another of the archangels.

6 furniture, physical conditions

2 We nestle. Explain the meta- here on earth. phor.

3 parasites. See Webster.

4 Gabriel (a Hebrew word meaning the mighty one of God), an archangel who in the Bible appears on various occasions to communicate prophecies.

7 The fall, etc. Here is another long compound sentence. Tell how many members, and select such details as you deem most descriptive or picturesque.

8 houstonia. What is the common name of this plant?

these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion.

My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river; and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities, behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate3 and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty: we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura,* a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging 5 stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. I am overinstructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I can not go back to toys.

1 village: that is, the village of Concord, Mass., the scene of a Revolutionary battle.

2 my friend: probably that philosophic hermit of Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau, a neighbor and dear friend of Emerson's.

6

7

am over-instructed: that is, in communion with nature, he has

8 novitiate (Latin novus, new), the period of probation through which one entering a religious | learned too much for ordinary life

order must pass.

to hold its charm.

2.- LITERARY FORM IN POETRY.

MUSIC and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child; and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony:1 no matter what objects are near it,-a gray rock, a grasspatch, an alder-bush, or a stake, - they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear.

We are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. The babe is lulled to sleep by the nurse's song. Sailors can work better for their yoheave-o. Soldiers can march better and fight better for the drum and trumpet.

4

Meter begins with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation 5 and exhalation of the lungs. If you hum or whistle the rhythm of the common English meters, you can easily believe these meters to be organic, derived from the human pulse, and to be therefore

1 monotony (Greek monos, alone, one, and tonos, tone), sameness.

reflected. Define.

5 inhalation (Latin halare, to breathe), to draw air into the lungs, Give the derivation of exhala

8 reflection, echo of sound and tion.” iteration of movement.

6 pulse (Latin pulsus, a beating;

4 Meter (Greek metron, a meas-from pellere, pulsam, to beat), the ure), poetical measure or rhythm, dependent on number and accent of syllables.

beating of the heart or blood-vessels. The phrase "derived from the human pulse” explains “organic."

not proper to1 one nation, but to mankind. I think you will also find a charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic,2 in these cadences, and be at once set on searching for the words that can rightly fill these vacant beats.

2

Another form of rhyme is iterations of phrase, as the record of the death of Sisera:

"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

The fact is made conspicuous, nay, colossal, by this simple rhetoric.

66

They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.”

Milton delights in these iterations:

"Though fallen on evil days,

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues.” 5

6

"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth its silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth its silver lining on the night."7

1 not proper to: that is, not the exclusive property or possession of (Latin proprius, one's own).

2 heroic, plaintive, pathetic. Are these adjectives placed in the strict or rhetorical order? (See Definitions 13, 14.) Place them in the prose order, and determine which arrangement is the more effective.

3 iterations (from Latin iter, a journey), repetitions.

4 colossal (Greek kolossos, a great statue), of great size: the meaning here is very emphatic, very apparent. 5 From Paradise Lost. 6 Was I.. night. Point out the examples of iterations. 7 From Comus.