EXERCISES

Are the images which you form made more vivid by the use of the figures in the following selections?

1.  She began to screech as wild as ocean birds.

2.  And when its force expended,
   The harmless storm was ended;
   And as the sunrise splendid
      Came blushing o’er the sea—­

3.  As a demon is hurled by an angel’s spear,
   Heels over head, to his proper sphere—­
   Heels over head and head over heels,—­
   Dizzily down the abyss he wheels,—­
   So fell Darius.

—­J.T.  Trowbridge.

4.  In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.

—­Hawthorne.

5.  Poverty, treading close at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last.

—­Hawthorne.

6.  Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—­roots that can be pulled up.

—­George Eliot.

7.  Nearing the end of the narrative, Ben paced up and down the narrow limits of the tent in great excitement, running his fingers through his hair, and barking out a question now and then.

8.  A sky above,
   Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

—­Lowell.

9.  In days of public commotion every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat.

—­Macaulay.

10.  It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read.  As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language.  They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance.  They are a perfect field of cloth of gold.  The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery.

—­Macaulay.

11.  And close behind her stood
    Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men,
    Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
    And labor.  Each was like a Druid rock,
    Or like a spire of land that stands apart
    Cleft from the main and wall’d about with mews.

—­Tennyson.

12.  But bland the smile that, like a wrinkling wind
    On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines.

—­Tennyson.

13.  The rush of affairs drifts words from their original meanings, as ships drag their anchors in a gale, but terms sheltered from common use hold to their moorings forever.

—­Mill.

+Theme XIV.+—­Write a story suggested by the picture on page 59 or by one of the following subjects:—­