and the tone flashes forth a golden, keen-edged
sword. With the thirteenth line the tone begins in the orange on "Now by
each knight that e'er hath prayed," flashes into yellow in "to fight
like a man," softens and deepens toward red in "and love like a maid,"
and returns to the orange to finish the horn _motif_.

Next in this poem which affords such a wonderful study for tone-color we
have the hautboy's message. The color is mixed and laid on the palette
ready for use as before, with the introductory lines:

And then the hautboy played and smiled,
And sang like any large-eyed Child,
Cool-hearted and all undefiled.

Don't let the words _large-eyed Child_ mislead you. Don't, I beseech
you, make the mistake of adopting the "Little Orphan Annie" tone with
which the "elocutionist" too often insults the pure treble of a child's
"undefiled" instrument. That is the keynote to us for our choice of
color--"cool-hearted and all undefiled." Almost a white tone, is it not?
With a little of the blue of the June sky? Try it. Let the blue be
visibly present in the first three lines:

"Huge Trade!" he said,
"Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head
And run where'er my finger led!"

turning to pure white in the next three lines:

Once said a Man--and wise was He--
Never shalt thou the heavens see
Save as a little child thou be.

The last voice comes from the "ancient wise bassoons." Again there is
danger. Do not, oh! do not fall afoul of the conventional old man's
quavering tone. There is nothing conventional about these "weird,
gray-beard old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes," chanting runes.
The last words of these introductory lines safeguard us--"chanted
runes." There is only one color of tone in which to _chant runes_. Gray,
is it not? Yes, but a silver gray, not the steel gray of the clarionet
when she became for the moment a commercial lover. Then in the
silver-gray tone of the philosopher, voice this last _motif_:

Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,
The sea of all doth lash and toss,
One wave forward and one across:
But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
And worst doth foam and flash to best,
And curst to blest.

The importance of a right use of tone-color in vocal interpretation was
impressed upon a Browning class last winter. We were reading the
_Dramatic Lyrics_. The poem for the hour was _Meeting at Night_. The
tone with which the first student a