MARCO BOZZARIS

149

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. Look up and give a sketch of the history of the Greek struggle for independence.

2. What picture is given in the first stanza?

3. What indicates the Turk's confidence in his own success? 4. What contrast is shown in the second stanza?

5. What in this stanza foreshadows the outcome of the struggle? 6. Who was Marco Bozzaris?

7. With what motives does he inspire his soldiers?

8. Look up the word Moslem and tell why it is applied to the Turks.

9. What is the outcome of the struggle?

10. What was indicated by his smile?

11. Under what circumstances is death the embodiment of “all we know, or dream, or fear of agony"?

12. How does death appear to the patriot?

13. Why can we tell his doom without a sigh?

REFERENCES

MONTGOMERY: Arnold von Winkleried.

BARRY: The Place to Die.

BYRON: The Isles of Greece.

BROWNING: Incident of the French Camp.

D'AMICI: The Sardinian Drummer Boy. (Dr. Sherman's Elements,

pp. 139-145).

WORDSWORTH: Character of the Happy Warrior.

MACAULAY: Horatius at the Bridge.

BURNS: Bannockburn.

PRINCE: Who Are the Free?

MILLER: The Defense of the Alamo.

TENNYSON: The Revenge.

GEORGE LUNT: Requiem.

ALBERT GORTON GREENE: The Baron's Last Banquet.

SIR HENRY TAYLOR: The Hero.

BRYANT: Stanzas on Freedom.

STORY: Io Victis.

CROLY: Death of Leonidas.

MIDSUMMER

J. T. TROWBRIDGE

APPY is that poet whose genius is tuned to catch the "invisible spirit of the air" and to transfuse it into part and parcel of our own experiences until we are able to see the common things of life with the poet's eye and understanding. It is not to every one that "there is a pleasure in the pathless woods." Most of us must be taught to love Nature in her varying moods.

Some poets have been peculiarly successful in such teaching; for instance, almost no one can read Bryant's Death of the Flowers without being thrilled with the creation of the dreamy unreality of the fading autumn. J. T. Trowbridge is able to teach in the same way as is shown by the following poem. He tactfully selects details whose absence would render the lesson incomplete and pictures them in his characteristic liquid melody of verse with a grace that charms all. Such work is always worth while and renders its product worthy a place among those things that help.

The following poem has the true ring of one who has heard the voices of Nature and who has communed with her visible forms. In the "holy silence" of Nature, the author's thrilling soul can hear the voice of Nature's God.

MIDSUMMER

151

MIDSUMMER*

Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.
O, softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the Summer lays!
Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.
I seek the coolest sheltered seat,
Just where the field and forest meet,-
Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,
The ancient oaks austere and grand,

And fringy roots and pebbles fret
The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch the mowers, as they go

Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row:
With even stroke their scythes they swing,
In tune their merry whetstones ring.
Behind, the nimble youngsters run,
And toss the thick swaths in the sun.

The cattle graze, while warm and still
Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,
And bright, where summer breezes break,
The green wheat crinkles like a lake.
The butterfly and humblebee
Come to the pleasant woods with me;
Quickly before me runs the quail,
Her chickens skulk behind the rail;
High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,
And the woodpecker pecks and flits.

* Used by permission of and by special arrangement with the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,
The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,
The swarming insects drone and hum,
The partridge beats its throbbing drum.
The squirrel leaps among the boughs,
And chatters in his leafy house.
The oriole flashes by; and, look!
Into the mirror of the brook,

Where the vain bluebird trims his coat
Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,

The dawn of peace descends on me.
O, this is peace! I have no need
Of friend to talk, of book to read:
A dear Companion here abides;
Close to my thrilling heart He hides;
The holy silence is His voice;
I lie and listen and rejoice.

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. How do you understand the first sentence?

2. What is an argosy? Look up the meaning carefully.

3. What is the subject of the verb "uplift"? (Line 8.)

4. Why is an oak called "austere," while a pine is said to be "bland"?

5. Define "fret," as used in line 15.

6. What difference in sentiment between stanzas 3 and 4?

7. What feeling is characteristic of the poem as a whole?

8. Why does the poet wish to be alone and have not even a book to read?

9. How can silence be a voice?

10. To what does the poet "listen"?

MIDSUMMER

153

REFERENCES

RILEY: Knee-Deep in June. An Old Timer.

READ: The Summer Shower.

SEBASTIAN EVANS: A Dirge for Summer.

LADY CURRIE: A May Song. In Green Old Gardens.
WHITTIER: Maud Muller.

EDMUND GOSSE: Lying in the Grass.

ROLLINS: Indian Summer.

DICKINSON: Indian Summer.

ROSSETTI: Silent Noon.

WORDSWORTH: Lines on a View of Tintern Abbey. The Reaper.

BRYANT: The Gladness of Nature.

JANE TAYLOR: Contented John.