Grimalkin grim that slew the fierce rodent,
Whose tooth insidious Johann's sackcloth rent.

Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foes assault,
That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,
Stored in the hallowed precincts to that hall
That rose complete at Jack's creative call.

Here stalks the impetuous cow with crumpled horn
Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast, that slew
The rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibers that involve the grain
Which lay in Hans' inviolate domain.

Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds, in fierce, vindictive scorn,
The hurrying hound, whose braggart bark and stir
Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur
Of Puss, that, with verminicidal claw,

Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw,
Lay reeking malt, that erst in Juan's courts we saw.

Robed in senescent garb, that seems, in sooth,
Too long a prey to Chronos' iron tooth,
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,
Full of young Eros' osculative sign,
To the lorn maiden, whose lact-albic hands
Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands
Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn,
Distort to realms ethereal, was borne

The beast Catulean, vexer of that sly
Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die

The old mordacious rat that dared devour
Ante-cedaneous ale in John's domestic bower.

Lo! here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen's golden bands the torn unthrift,
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,
Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of the sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.

The loud cantankerous shanghai comes at last,
Whose shouts arouse the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament
To him who, robed in garments indigent,
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,

Th' emulgator of that horned brute morose

That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that kilt The rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.

SEAWEED

When descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Stormwind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main ;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, erelong

From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth ;
From the flashing surf, whose vision

Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor

That forever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;

From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

LONGFELLOW

CHAPTER X

ORATORICAL DELIVERY

AN oration is a composition expressly intended for delivery before an audience, presumably of considerable numbers, and in a place large enough to accommodate such an audience. Many of the greatest masterpieces of eloquence, like Lincoln's "Gettysburg Speech" or Webster's "Bunker Hill Oration," were delivered in the open air to vast multitudes of people. Under such circumstances, it is evident that the speaker's delivery must be very different from that which he would use in conversation, or in an informal address to a few friends.

The orator's voice must reach, if possible, to the farthest listener, and time must be given for this, or his words, which sound clear enough near at hand, will become inextricably jumbled on the way.

Again, the speaker must articulate with the utmost distinctness, being especially careful that the final sound of each word is spoken clearly and kept separate from the next. Delicate shades of inflection are inaudible under such circumstances, and the orator must rely more upon enlargement and variety of melody than upon slide. Thus the first words of Lincoln's oration, which might in conversational delivery have a form something like this:

Four

score and

ago, our fathers brought forth

years seven