he end of each line:
And they had trod the Pass once more, and stoop'd on either side
To pluck the heather from the spot where he had dropped and died.
In the second line, the caesural pause occurs after "spot," but the
phrase "from the spot where he had dropped and died" expresses one
idea and must be given as a whole. The rhythm and the grouping appear
to be at variance; but the difficulty is easily overcome by making the
caesural pause shorter than the pause after "heather" which introduces
the group, and at the same time, by not allowing the voice to fall on
the word "spot."
The following affords another instance where the grouping appears to
interfere with the rhythm:
If the husband of this gifted well
Shall drink before his wife,
A happy man thenceforth is he,
For he shall be master for life.
"Of this gifted well" is evidently not connected in thought with
"husband." It must be separated from "husband" by a pause and attached
to "shall drink" at the beginning of the next line. To do this, it is
not, however, necessary to omit the pause at the end of the line; for
this would mar the effect of the rhythm. The difficulty is again
overcome by making the pause at the end of the line shorter than the
pauses which mark the grouping, and by not allowing the voice to fall
on "well."
=Time= is the rate at which we read. It is fast or slow according to
the number and the length of the pauses between words and phrases, and
also according to the length of time the reader dwells on the words
themselves. There is perhaps no more frequent criticism made on
reading than that it is too fast. What does this mean? It means that
the reader is not doing enough thinking as he repeats the words.
Consequently, he does not dwell on words that are full of meaning, nor
pause before and after words and phrases to make the mental picture
and to grasp the thought more fully. Moreover, for the benefit of the
listener, the reading should be slower than is required by the reader
for himself. The reader, with his eye on the page, can allow his eye
and mind to run ahead of his voice, and can thus realize the thought
in less time than the listener. The following line calls for a
comparatively small amount of thinking:
High flew the spray above their heads, yet onward still they bore.
Here, there is little except what is on the surface, and the thoughts
suggested by the words are of the kind to make the mind think rapi
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