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A Quarterly Magazine

VOL. V.

INCLUDING NUMBERS

SEVENTEEN, EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN
AND TWENTY

EDITED BY

PAUL M. PEARSON

If

PUBLISHED BY
HINDS, NOBLE & ELDREDGE

31, 33 AND 35 WEST FIFTEENTH STREET
NEW YORK CITY

Copyright, 1909-1910 By Pearson Brothers.

Volume V, No. 1.

Whole No. 17.

Expression in Reading

BY ROBERT LLOYD.*

'Tis not enough the voice be sound and clear, 'Tis modulation that must charm the ear.

When desperate heroines grieve with tedious moan,
And whine their sorrows in a see-saw tone,

The same soft sounds of unimpassioned woes
Can only make the yawning hearers doze.

That voice all modes of passion can express

Which marks the proper word with proper stress;
But none emphatic can the reader call
Who lays an equal emphasis on all.

Some o'er the tongue the labored measures roll
Slow and deliberate as the parting toll;
Point every stop, mark every pause so strong,
Their words like stage-processions stalk along.
All affectation but creates disgust,

And even in speaking we may seem too just.

In vain for them the pleasing measure flows
Whose recitation runs it all to prose,
Repeating what the poet sets not down,
The verb disjoining from its friendly noun,
While pause, and break, and repetition join
To make a discord in each tuneful line.

Some placid natures fill the allotted scene
With lifeless drone, insipid and serene;
While others thunder every couplet o'er,
And almost crack your ears with rant and roar.
More nature oft and finer strokes are shown

* Robert Lloyd was an English poet of the middle eighteenth century.

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