speech-making that some points regarding metrical reading may be quite
in place in a speaker's training. Practice in verse reading is of use
also because of the frequency of quoted lines from the poets in
connection with the prose speech.

To read a poem well one must become in spirit a poet. He must not only
think, he must feel. He must exercise imagination. He must, we will say
it again, see visions and dream dreams. What was said about vividness
in the discussion of expressional effects applies generally to the
reading of poetry. One will read much better if he has tried to write--
in verse as well as in prose. He will then know how to put himself in
the place of the poet, and will not be so likely to mar the poet's
verses by "reading them ill-favoredly." He will know the value of words
that have been so far sought, and may not slur over them; he may feel
the sound of a line formed to suggest a sound in nature. He will know
that a meter has been carefully worked out, and that, in the reading,
that meter is of the spirit of the poem; it is not to be disregarded.
Likewise he will appreciate the place of rhyme, and may not try so to
cover it up as entirely to lose its effect. In humorous verse,
especially, rhyme plays an effective part; and in all verse,
alliteration, variations in melody, the lighter and the heavier touch,
acceleration and retard in movement, the caesura, or pause in the line,
and the happy effect of the occasional cadence, are features which one
can come to appreciate and respect only with reading one's favorite
poems many times, with spirit warm, with faculties alert.




THE MAKING OF THE SPEECH