His trembling voice grew faint and hoarse ; his grasp was childish

weak, His eyes put on a dying look, -he sighed and ceased to speak. His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled — The soldier of the Legion in a foreign land was dead ! And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strewn; Yes, calmly on that dreadful scene, her pale light seemed to shine, As it shone on distant Bingen, — fair Bingen on the Rhine.

- HON. MRS. NORTON.

EXERCISE LXIV.

PARAPHRASING.

DIRECTION. — Follow the Direction of the preceding Exercise.

THANATOPSIS.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language ; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-
Comes a still voice. — Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form is laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone : nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings,
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers, of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. — The hills
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound

Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep — the dead there reign alone.

So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
Unheeded by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of

men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age, cut off,
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

- WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

LESSON XXXVI.

FIGURES OF SPEECH.

In preceding Lessons we have studied some of the different forms in which thought may be expressed. We now come to consider other forms which are of such importance that they deserve to be examined by themselves. These are usually called Figures of Speech. They consist of intentional deviations from the ordinary application of words or from the usual forms of expression. The purpose of these deviations is to increase the effect of language — to present thought in a more attractive or more forcible

manner.

a

Examples. — “He is a lion." Here the word “lion” is turned from its usual signification to denote “a man of strength and courage,” and it expresses the idea in a more pleasing and striking way than do the plain words.

“ The silver moon " is much more beautiful than “ The moon which has a pale bright color.”

Compare further : “All is not gold that glitters.” “Appearances are often de

ceptive.” “ Our heads are in the lion's “We are completely in the mouth.”

power of our enemy, and he

may destroy us at any moment." “ The arrows fell like flakes “ The arrows fell in countless of snow on Christmas Day." numbers."

Value and Use of Figures. - Figures of Speech perform a very important part in language. They are at once its ornament and its strength. Among their chief uses are these :

1. They give variety by affording an entirely different way of expressing a thought.

2. They enable us to present ideas so that ihey may be more easily grasped. This is especially true of abstract ideas, as they are made easier of comprehension by being associated with concrete objects.

3. They add to the force of language.

4. They enable us to express our thoughts in a more attractive form.

5. They give elevation, dignity, and grace to language.

6. They increase the capabilities of language by giving the same word the power of presenting different ideas. For example, in the sentence, “He is a fox," the word “fox," which usually denotes an animal, is here employed to designate the " quality of craftiness."

7. In general terms, it may be said that Figures of Speech intensify all the qualities of style.

Kinds of Figures. — The Figures of Speech most commonly used may

be classified thus : 1. Those based on the idea of resemblance, the Simile, Metaphor, Allegory, Personification.

2. Those based on contiguity or the law of association, Synecdoche, Metonymy, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Vision.

3. Those based on the idea of contrast, - Antithesis, Epigram, Euphemism, Irony, Interrogation, Climax.

THE SIMILE.

A Simile is a figure which expresses the likeness one object bears to another. The objects compared must differ in kind; likening one man to another or one house to another does not constitute the rhetorical figure.

The likeness is generally expressed by some word such as, like, as, compared to.

Sometimes the sign of comparison is omitted, as, “When the rising sun fell on Memnon's statue, it awakened music in that breast of stone. Religion does the same with human nature.”