Composition Rhetoric by Stratton D. Brooks

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--Holland.

+116. The Stanza.+--Some of our verse is continuous like Milton's
_Paradise Lost_ or Shakespeare's plays, but much of it is divided into
groups called stanzas. The lines or verses composing a stanza are bound
together by definite principles of rhythm and rhyme. Usually stanzas of
the same poem have the same structure, but stanzas of different poems show
a variety of structure.

Two of the most simple forms are the couplet and the triplet. They often
form a part of a continuous poem, but they are occasionally found in
divided poems.

1.

The western waves of ebbing day
Roll'd o'er the glen their level way.

--Scott.

2.

A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
Her golden brooch such birth betray'd.

--Scott.

A stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. The lines of quatrains show a
variety in the arrangement of their rhymes. The first two lines may rhyme
with each other and the last two with each other; the first and fourth may
rhyme and the second and third; or the rhymes may alternate. Notice the
example on page 208, and also the following:--

1.

I ask not wealth, but power to take
And use the things I have aright.
Not years, but wisdom that shall make
My life a profit and delight.

--Phoebe Cary.

2.

I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God,--
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view.

--Holland.

A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter verse with alternate rhymes is
called an elegiac stanza.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

--Gray.

The Tennysonian stanza consists of four iambic tetrameter lines in which
the first line rhymes with the fourth, and the second with the third.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before.

--Tennyson.

Five and six line stanzas are found in a great variety. The following are
examples:--

1.

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

--Shelley.

2.

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring.
Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

--Holmes.

3.

The upper air burst into life;
And a hundred fire flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about;
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.

--Coleridge.

The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic
pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine.
Burns makes use of this stanza in _The Cotter's Saturday Night._ The
following stanza from that poem shows the plan of the rhymes:--

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much beloved isle.

EXERCISES

_A._ Scan the following:--

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

--Wordsworth.

Into the sunshine,
Full of light,
Leaping and flashing
From morn to night!

--Lowell.

_B._ Name each verse in the following stanza:--

Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight--
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

--Poe.

+117. Kinds of Poetry.+-There are three general classes of poetry:
narrative, lyric, and dramatic.

_A. Narrative poetry_, as may be inferred from its name, relates events
which may be either real or imaginary. Its chief varieties are the epic,
the metrical romance or lesser epic, the tale, and the ballad.

_An epic_ poem is an extended narrative of an elevated character that
deals with heroic exploits which are frequently under supernatural
control. This kind of poetry is characterized by the intricacy of plot, by
the delineation of noble types of character, by its descriptive effects,
by its elevated language, and by its seriousness of tone. The epic is
considered as the highest effort of man's poetic genius. It is so
difficult to produce an epic that but few literatures contain more than
one. Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, Virgil's _Aeneid_, the German
_Nibelungenlied_, the Spanish _Cid_, Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Milton's
_Paradise Lost_ are important epics found in different literatures.

A _metrical romance_ or lesser epic is a narrative poem, shorter and less
dignified than the epic. Longfellow's _Evangeline_ and Scott's _Marmion_
and _Lady of the Lake_ are examples of this kind of poetry.

_A metrical tale is_ a narrative poem somewhat simpler and shorter than
the metrical romance, but more complex than the ballad. Longfellow's
_Tales of a Wayside Inn_, Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_, and Lowell's _Vision
of Sir Launfal_ are examples of the tale.

_A ballad_ is the shortest and most simple of all narrative poems. It
relates but a single incident and has a very simple structure. In this
kind of poetry the interest centers upon the incident rather than upon any
beauty or elegance of language. Many of the Robin Hood Ballads are well
known. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and Longfellow's _Wreck of the
Hesperus_ are other examples of the ballad. It may be well to note here
that it is not always possible to draw definite lines between two
different kinds of narrative poetry. In fact, there will sometimes be a
difference of opinion as regards the classification.

_B. Lyric poetry_ was the name originally applied to poetry that was to be
sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, but now the name is often applied
to poems that are not intended to be sung at all. Lyric poetry deals
primarily with the feelings and emotions. Love, hate, jealousy, grief,
hope, and praise are emotions that may be expressed in lyric poetry. Its
chief varieties are the song, the ode, the elegy, and the sonnet.

A _song_ is a short poem intended to be sung. Songs may be divided into
sacred and secular. _Jerusalem, the Golden_, and _Lead, Kindly Light_, are
examples of sacred songs. Secular songs may be patriotic, convivial, or
sentimental.

An _ode_ expresses exalted emotion and is more complex in structure than
the song. Some of the best odes in our language are Dryden's _Ode to St.
Cecilia_, Wordsworth's _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_, Keats's _Ode
on a Grecian Urn_, Shelley's _Ode to a Skylark_, and Lowell's
_Commemoration Ode_.

An _elegy_ is a lyric pervaded by the feeling of grief or melancholy.
Milton's _Lycidas_, Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, and Gray's _Elegy in a
Country Churchyard_ are all noted elegies.

A _sonnet_ is a lyric poem of fourteen lines which deals with a single
idea or sentiment. It is not a stanza taken from a poem, but is a complete
poem itself. In the Italian sonnet and those modeled after it, the
emotional feeling rises through the first two quatrains, reaching its
climax at or near the end of the eighth line, and then subsides through
the two tercets which make up the remaining six lines. If the sentiment
expressed does not adjust itself to this ebb and flow, it is not suitable
for a sonnet. Milton's sonnet on his blindness is one of the best. Notice
the emotional transition in the middle of the eighth line. This sonnet
will also illustrate the fixed rhyme scheme:--

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
Doth God exact day labor, light denied?
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need,
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

There is a form of sonnet called the Shakespearean which differs in its
arrangement from the Italian sonnet.

_C. Dramatic poetry_ relates the occurrence of human events, and is
designed to be spoken on the stage. If the drama has an unhappy ending, it
is _a tragedy_. As is becoming in such a theme, the language is dignified
and impressive, and the whole appeals to our deeper emotions. If the drama
has a happy conclusion, it is _a comedy_. Here the movement is quicker,
the language less dignified, and the effort is to make the whole light and
amusing.

PART II

Description, Narration, Exposition, and Argument have been treated in an
elementary way in Part I. A more extensive treatment of each is given in
Part II. It has been deemed undesirable to repeat in Part II many things
which have been previously treated. The treatment of any one of the forms
of discourse as given in Part II is not complete. By reference to the
index all the sections treating of any phase of any one subject may be
found.

[Illustration: See page 224, _C._]

VIII. DESCRIPTION

+118. Description Defined.+--By means of our senses we gain a knowledge of
the world. We see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; and the ideas so acquired
are the fundamental elements of our knowledge, without which thinking
would be impossible. It, therefore, happens that much of the language that
we use has for its purpose the transmission to others of such ideas. Such
writing is called description. We may, therefore, define description as
that form of discourse which has for its purpose the formation of an
image.

As here used, the term _image_ applies to any idea presented by the
senses. In a more limited sense it means the mental picture which is
formed by aid of sight. It is for the purpose of presenting images of this
kind that description is most often employed. It is most frequently
concerned with images of objects seen, less frequently with sounds, and
seldom with ideas arising through touch, taste, and smell. In this
chapter, therefore, we shall consider chiefly the methods of using
language for the purpose of arousing images of objects seen.

+119. Order of Observation.+--In description we shall find it of advantage
to use such language that the reader will form the image in the same way
as he would form an image from actual observation. There is a customary
and natural order of observation, and if we present our material in that
same order, the mind more easily forms the desired image. Our first need
in the study of description is to determine what this natural order of
observation is.

Look at the building across the street. Your _first_ impression is that of
size, shape, and color. Almost instantly, but nevertheless _secondly_, you
add certain details as to roof, door, windows, and surroundings. Further
observation adds to the number of details, such as the size of the window
panes or the pattern of the lattice work. Our first glance may assure us
that we see a train, our second will tell us how many cars, our third will
show us that each car is marked Michigan Central. The oftener we look or
the longer we look, the greater is the number of details of which we
become conscious. Any number of illustrations will show that we first see
the general outline, and after that the details. We do not observe the
details one by one and then combine them into an object, but we first see
the object as a whole, and our first impression becomes more vivid as we
add detail after detail.

Following this natural order of observation a description should begin
with a sentence that will give the reader a general impression of the
whole. Notice the beginnings of the following selections. After reading
the italicized sentence in each, consider the image that it has caused you
to form.

The door opened upon the main or living room. _It was a long apartment
with low ceiling and walls of hewn logs chinked and plastered and all
beautifully whitewashed and clean._ The tables, chairs, and benches were
all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox,
and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer
and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which
Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a
huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and
grasses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room,
smaller, and richly furnished with relics of former grandeur.

--Connor: _The Sky Pilot_.

_The stranger was of middle height, loosely knit and thin, with a cunning,
brutal face._ He had a bullet-shaped head, with fine, soft, reddish brown
hair; a round, stubbly beard shot with gray; and small, beady eyes set
close together. He was clothed in an old, black, grotesquely fitting
cutaway coat, with coarse trousers tucked into his boot tops. A worn
visored cloth cap was on his head. In his right hand he carried an old
muzzle-loading shotgun.

--George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's").

+120. The Fundamental Image.+--The first impression of the object as a
whole is called the fundamental image. The beginning of a description
should cause the reader to form a correct general outline, which will
include the main characteristics of the object described. While the
fundamental image lacks definiteness and exactness, yet it must be such
that it shall not need to be revised as we add the details. If one should
begin a description by saying, "Opposite the church there is a large
two-story, brick house with a conservatory on the left," the reader would
form at once a mental picture including the essential features of the
house. Further statements about the roof, the windows, the doors, the
porch, the yard, and the fence, would each add something to the picture
until it was complete. The impression with which the reader started would
be added to, but not otherwise changed. But if we should conclude the
description with the statement, "This house was distinguished from its
neighbors by the fact that it was not of the usual rectangular form, but
was octagonal in shape," the reader would find that the image which he
had formed would need to be entirely changed. It is evident that if the
word _octagonal_ is to appear at all, it must be at the beginning. Care
must be taken to place all the words that affect the fundamental image in
the sentence that gives the general characteristics of that which we are
describing.

Hawthorne begins _The House of the Seven Gables_ as follows:--

Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty
wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various
points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The
street is Pyncheon street; the house is the old Pyncheon house; and an elm
tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every
town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon elm. On my occasional visits
to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon street, for
the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,--the
great elm tree and the weather-beaten edifice.

Later he gives a detailed description of the house on the morning of its
completion as follows:--

Maule's lane, or Pyncheon street, as it were now more decorous to call it,
was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to
church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice,
which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind.
There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of the street, but in
pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was ornamented with quaint
figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn or
stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, pebbles, and bits of
glass, with which the woodwork of the walls was overspread. On every side
the seven gables pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect
of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the spiracles of one
great chimney. The many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes,
admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the
second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath
the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms.
Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little
spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular
portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up
that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of
the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so
bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken
halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which
the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of
strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make
among men's daily interests.

EXERCISES

_A._ Select the sentence or part of a sentence which gives the fundamental
image in each of the following selections:--

1. It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies,
frowning under an outrageously insistent Mansard, capped by a cupola, and
staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs. Two
cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mold, stood on
opposite sides of the front walk, their backs toward it and each other,
their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that
they gazed upon the passer-by--yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm
dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front door; they also
were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the
deer by coats of black paint and shellac.

--Booth Tarkington: _The Conquest of Canaan_ ("Harper's").

2. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an
old-fashioned dressing gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or
almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his
forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the
room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive
that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly,
and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor,
had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his
physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait.
It was the spirit of a man that could not walk. The expression of his
countenance--while, notwithstanding, it had the light of reason in it--
seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to
recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see twinkling among
half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a
positive blaze, gushing vividly upward--more intently, but with a certain
impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory
splendor, or be at once extinguished.

--Hawthorne: _The House of the Seven Gables_.

3. One of the best known of the flycatchers all over the country is the
kingbird. He is a little smaller than a robin, and all in brownish black,
with white breast. He has also white tips to his tail feathers, which look
very fine when he spreads it out wide in flying. Among the head feathers
of the kingbird is a small spot of orange color. This is called in the
books a "concealed patch," because it is seldom seen, it is so hidden by
the dark feathers.

--Mary Rogers Miller: _The Brook Book_.
(Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page and Co.)

Notice the use of a comparison in establishing a correct fundamental image
in example 3.

_B._ Select five buildings with which the members of the class are
familiar. Write a single sentence for each, giving the fundamental image.
Read these sentences to the class. Let them determine for which building
each is written.

_C._ Notice the pictures on page 218. Write a single sentence for each,
giving the fundamental image.

+Theme LII.+--_Write a paragraph, describing something with which you are
familiar._

Suggested subjects:--
1. The county court house.
2. The new church.
3. My neighbor's house.
4. Where we go fishing.
5. A neighboring lake.
6. A cozy nook.

(Underscore the sentence that gives the fundamental image. Will the
reader get from it at once a correct general outline of the object to
be described? Will he need to change the fundamental image as your
description proceeds?)

+121. Point of View.+--What we shall see first depends upon the point of
view. Seen from one position, an object or a landscape will present a
different appearance from that which it will present when viewed from
another position. A careful writer will give that fundamental image that
would come from actual observation if the reader were looking at the scene
described from the point of view chosen by the writer. He will not include
details that cannot be seen from that position even though he knows that
they exist.

Notice that the following descriptions include only that which can be seen
from the place indicated in the italicized phrases:--

_Forward from the bridge_ he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and
irregular heights, with groves and lakes and fanciful houses linked
together by white paths and shining streams. The valleys were spread
below, that the river might be poured upon them for refreshment in day of
drought, and they were as green carpets figured with beds and fields of
flowers and flecked with flocks of sheep white as balls of snow; and the
voices of shepherds following the flocks were heard afar. As if to tell
him of the pious inscription of all he beheld, the altars out under the
open sky seemed countless, each with a white-gowned figure attending it,
while processions in white went slowly hither and thither between them;
and the smoke of the altars half risen hung collected in pale clouds over
the devoted places.

Wallace: _Ben-Hur_.
(Copyright, 1880. Harper and Bros.)

The house stood unusually near the river, facing eastward, and standing
four-square, with an immense veranda about its sides, and a flight of
steps in front, spreading broadly downward, as we open our arms to a
child. _From the veranda_ nine miles of river were seen; and in their
compass near at hand, the shady garden full of rare and beautiful flowers;
farther away broad fields of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of
the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a dark belt of cypress forest.

--Cable: _Old Creole Days_.

+122. Selection of Details Affected by Point of View.+--A skillful writer
will not ask his reader to perform impossible feats. We cannot see the
leaves upon a tree a mile away, and so should not describe them. The finer
effects and more minute details should be included only when our chosen
point of view brings us near enough to appreciate them. In the selection
below, Stevenson tells only as much about Swanston cottage as can be seen
at a distance of six miles.

So saying she carried me around the battlements _towards the opposite or
southern side of the fortress and indeed to a bastion_ almost immediately
overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of
some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and
irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of
these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a
procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention.

"You see those marks?" she said. "We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a
little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops
of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is
Swanston cottage, where my brother and I are living."

--Stevenson: _St. Ives_.
(Copyright, 1897. Charles Scribner's Sons.)

Notice in the selection below that for objects _near at hand_ details so
small as the lizard's eye are given, but that these details are not given,
when we are asked to observe things far away.

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