and daily companions, but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveler from the spirit land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story they did not believe it. I now tell it to you and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden."

How does Poe prepare us for a tale of horror in the first paragraph? What does his description of the "little cliff" show us concerning the old fisherman? Try to see the view from the crag as the speaker saw it. What change took place in the water as they gazed down upon it? Read this magnificent description carefully. Can you find instances of the old man's courage? How did he make his escape? How much time was consumed in this experience? What one feeling is brought out in this story?

SUGGESTIONS FOR ORAL AND WRITTEN ENGLISH
THEME SUBJECTS

While the dramatic method of portraying character is used to some extent in this story, the main purpose of the writer is to arouse in the reader one feeling, that of horror. Recall one moment of terror that you have experienced. Describe your feeling, bearing in mind your climax. When you have written this, look it over carefully and mark out any expression that would weaken the general impression you wish to create. Write after this revision a brief introduction in the form of a conversation to explain whatever is necessary to an understanding of the situation. In order to make others feel your experience, you must first "live it" again, then tell it while you are in the mood. Determine

that you will make your best friend feel as you did under one of the situations suggested here.

The Masque of the Red Death (in Prose Tales). Edgar Allan Poe. The Pit and the Pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe.

Hop Frog. Edgar Allan Poe.

The Fall of the House of Usher. Edgar Allan Poe.

Ethan Brand (in The Snow Image). Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts (in the New Arabian Nights). Robert Louis Stevenson.

No Haid Pawn (In Ole Virginia). Thomas Nelson Page.

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices. Charles Dickens.

King Solomon of Kentucky (in Flute and Violin). James Lane Allen.

A GROUP OF BIRD POEMS

THE SKYLARK

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was born in England three years before John Keats. Shelley is one of the great English lyric poets. Although his verse is often ethereal, airy, intangible, he loves to identify himself with the animating spirit of nature, the spirit which he finds so manifest in the skylark, night, and the west wind. No one surpasses him in this field. He was drowned in the Bay of Spezzia, Italy, the year after Keats died, and buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, not far from Keats. See also:

Halleck's New English Literature, pp. 416-425, 446, 447.

Dowden's Life of Shelley.

Sharp's Life of Shelley.

WHAT objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

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.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

1

THE FIRST MOCKING BIRD IN SPRING 1

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–1886) was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was educated for the profession of law, but devoted all his spare time to writing. In the Civil War, he lost both fortune and health. He spent his last years in a rude hut in the woods of Georgia, where he wrote many of his best poems. His poetry is musical, and shows an intimate love of nature. See also:

Halleck's History of American Literature, pp. 311, 312, 337.

Pickett's Literary Hearthstones of Dixie.

Edward Mims in Library of Southern Literature.

1 Used by special arrangement with Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Company, publishers of Hayne's Poetical Works.

THE wren and the field lark listen

To the gush from their laureate's throat;
And the bluebird stops on the oak to catch
Each rounded and perfect note.

The sparrow, his pert head reared aloft,
Has ceased to chirp in the grassy croft,
And is bending the curves of his tiny ear
In the pose of a critic wise, to hear.
A blackbird, perched on a glistening gum,
Seems lost in a rapture, deep and dumb;
And as eagerly still in his trancèd hush,
'Mid the copse beneath, is a clear-eyed thrush.
No longer the dove by the thorn-tree root
Moans sad and soft as a far-off flute.

All Nature is hearkening, charmed and mute.

TAMPA ROBINS1

SIDNEY LANIER

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) was born of an old, cultured family in Macon, Georgia. He served four years in the Confederate army, was imprisoned, and suffered many hardships. After six years of struggle with ill health and hard study, he was appointed lecturer on English literature at Johns Hopkins University. He died two years later. In some of his poetry he has never been surpassed by any American poet. See also:

Halleck's History of American Literature, pp. 313-317, 338.

Edward Mims's Sidney Lanier.

Burt's The Lanier Book.

Ward's Memorial of Sidney Lanier, in Poems by Sidney Lanier, edited by his wife.

THE robin laughed in the orange tree:

"Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:

1 From Poems by Sidney Lanier, copyright, 1884, 1891, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by special arrangement with the publishers.