s spoken. With a swift, salient,
rising inflection on the opening word of the second line, an inflection
which creates expectancy of change, the voice lifts the thought out of
the minor into the major key. I must call your attention to the vital
significance of the use of pause at this point by simply asking you to
indulge in it. Stop after uttering the word _till_ and study the effect
of the pause. It is the pause quite as much as the inflection, you see,
which induces the expectant attitude you desire to create in the mind of
your auditor. With the next three words, "that May morn," the tone takes
on a bit of the warmth of early summer. A lingering cadence on the word
"May" will help the suggestion. With the third line the voice begins to
shine. I know no other way to express it. The inflections are swift and
straight, but not staccato, because they must suggest a growth, not a
burst of color. The tone on which the words are borne must be
continuous. It must not be broken off definitely with each word, as is
to prove most effective, we shall find, in handling the third line of
the second verse. The fourth line brings the full, glowing, radiant tone
on the first word, "violets." This tone must be held in full volume on
the last two words. The law for beautiful speech must be observed here.
(But where should it not be observed?) Let us recall the law,
"_Beautiful speech depends upon openness of vowels and definiteness of
consonants._" The vowels give volume to a word, the consonants form.
Slur your consonants and squeeze your vowels in the three words of this
line, "Violets were born," and what becomes of this miracle of spring?
The voicing of the second verse is very like that of the first. The
opening line demands the same gray monotone. But the three words,
"sky," "scowl," and "cloud," if clear-cut in utterance, as they should
be, will break the level of the line more than the single word "starved"
in the first line of the first verse can do, or was meant to do. There
is the same swift lift of the voice in the opening word of the second
line, the same change to the major key, the same growing glow in the
tone on the third line, and the same radiant outburst of color sustained
through the last line. The only difference lies in the suffusion of
radiance in the tone to suggest the coming of color to the bank, in the
first verse, and the outburst of radiance to suggest the sudden
splitting of the clouds and the star's swif