Vocal Expression Part 6

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

How shall we create an atmosphere for the reading of these verses! How can we catch the spirit of the creator of them! Shall we ever feel ready to voice that first line? Do you know Jules Breton's picture _The Lark_?

Do you love it? Go, then, and stand before it, actually or in imagination. Let something of the spirit which informs that lovely child, lifting her eyes, her head in an att.i.tude of listening rapture, steal over you. I know her power. I have tested it. In reading the "Skylark" with a cla.s.s of boys and girls from twelve to fourteen years old, I tried the experiment. I happened to have with me a beautiful copy of Breton's picture. I took it to the cla.s.s-room. I wrote on the blackboard verses of the poem and hung the picture over them. The _picture_ taught them to read the poem. The eyes of the girl became their teacher. I tried the experiment, with a private pupil in my studio, with a somewhat different result. I had told her to bring a copy of Sh.e.l.ley's poems to her next lesson. "Do you know the ode _To a Skylark_?" I asked. "Yes," she said. A copy of Breton's picture hung on the wall. "Before you open your book look at the picture," I said. She obeyed. Her expression, always radiant, deepened its radiance. "Do you know what the girl is doing?" I asked. "Oh yes, she is listening to the skylark." "How do you know?" "I have heard the skylark sing." "I never have," I said. "Read the poem to me." Now when _I_ read the "Skylark," I see the girl in Jules Breton's picture, but I hear the voice of my English pupil.

But if our apperceptive background fails to furnish a memory of the identical sight and sound for our inspiring, it at least holds bird notes and bird flights of great beauty, and we must call upon these for the impulse to voice Sh.e.l.ley's apostrophe:

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

An early autumn number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1907 published a poem by Mr. Ridgley Torrence, ent.i.tled _The Lesser Children_, or _A Threnody at the Hunting Season_. The poem is worthy, in sentiment and structure, to be set beside Sh.e.l.ley's ode. Let us compare with the picture which the eighteenth-century poet has given us this one from our modern song-writer:

Who has not seen in the high gulf of light What, lower, was a bird, but now Is moored and altered quite Into an island of unshaded joy?

To whom the mate below upon the bough Shouts once and brings him from his high employ.

Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud, But took a little of the day, A little of the colored sky, And of the joy that would not stay He wove a song that cannot die.

Now let us study closely the first verse of the older poem. Spirit and voice must soar in the first line, "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" The two words "hail" and "blithe" are swift-winged words. Let them fly. Give them their wings. Let them do all they are intended to do. The rhythm of the whole poem is aspiring. Reverence the rhythm, but keep the thought floating clear above it in the second line, "Bird thou never wert." With the next two lines the tone must gather head to be poured forth in the last line, "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." Let us make another comparative study. Set on the other side of this picture Lowell's description of the "little bird" in his prologue to Sir Launfal's vision:

The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives.

The second verse of the "Skylark" demands a still higher flight of imagination and tone. Let us try it.

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

Again all the words rise and float. Sing them over: _higher_, _higher_, _springest_, _fire_, _wingest_, _singing_, _soar_, _soaring_, _singest_.

The reader must feel himself poised for flight in every word of the first three verses. Why does the poet say cloud of fire? What is the color of the skylark? And now the tone, which has been of a radiant hue through these three verses, must soften a little in the first three lines of the next verse--

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight;--

glow gold again in the last three lines--

Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, and yet I hear thy shrill delight--

and become the white of an incandescent light in the next verse--

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

Do you not see that the secret of its beauty lies, for vocal interpretation, in the color of tone and in the inflection of the words?

Say "unseen," dwelling on the second syllable; "shrill delight,"

directing _shrill_ over the head of _delight_; "keen," making it cleave the air like an arrow; "silver sphere," suggesting a moonlit path across water; "intense" and "narrows," letting the tone recede into the "white dawn"; "see," with a vanis.h.i.+ng stress; and "feel," with a deepening note carried to the end. So we might go on through the twenty-one stanzas which make up the poem.

Please a.n.a.lyze undirected the next two verses.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

In reading the first lines of the next four verses we must avoid monotony.

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glowworm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and gra.s.s, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflower'd, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Vary, if only for variety, the pitch on which you begin each of these first lines. Let the first three words of the eighth verse, "like a poet," ascend in pitch. Keep the voice level in the first line of the ninth verse, "like a high-born maiden." Let the pitch fall in the first words of the tenth stanza, "like a glowworm golden." And again keep the tone level on the first line of the next stanza, "like a rose embower'd." I leave to you the a.n.a.lysis of the rest of the poem:

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling gra.s.s, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpa.s.s.

Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt Match'd with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain?

What field, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear, keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

--Sh.e.l.lEY.

SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION

The following selections from lyric poetry are designed to give the voice exercise in the expression of varied emotions.

I

THE DAFFODILS