Ballads and Narrative Poems
Title: Ballads and Narrative Poems Compiled and edited by: T W Moles Publisher: Longmans, Green and Co, London Year published: 1954 175 pages From the introduction: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in one of his essays remarked, "To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great and dangerous step. With not a few, I think, a large proportion of their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking' overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately period." If this warning is needed when we read lyrical poetry, it is still more urgent when we read narrative poems; for when we read songs we do tend to hear in our minds the music and rhythm of the lines, but in reading a poem which narrates a story, we may become so interested in the story itself that we fail to notice the chime and the march, and in so doing we lose much of the enjoyment which the poet himself experienced wh...