[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER] VOL. VIII.—NO. 375.] MARCH 5, 1887. [PRICE ONE PENNY. THE STORM BY ESTHER WIGLESWORTH. Hark! hark! hark! Hark to the thunder’s roar, Hark how the maddened waves Burst on the rock-girt shore! Lashed by the furious winds, Their foaming crests they rear, Rush on with mighty bound, Start back in shuddering fear. Hark to the rattling hail! Hark to the driving rain! The heavens, a blaze of light, Throb as in quiv’ring pain; All Nature seems to work, Unchecked, its own wild will, While man looks on in awe, And bird and beast are still. God on the whirlwind rides, The storm is ’neath His feet, He holds in His right hand The winds, His coursers fleet; They bear creation’s Lord In triumph on His way, And in their maddest race His slightest check obey. The lightning is His glance, His breath upheaves the sea, The thunder His dread voice Of awful majesty; In Nature’s seeming war Its Maker walks abroad, And all its mighty powers Are servants of our God. [Illustration: THE COMING STORM.] _All rights reserved._] SOME OF THE POETRY WE READ. A FEW NOTES ON THE MODERN USE OF THE OLD FRENCH METRICAL FORMS. BY J. W. GLEESON WHITE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.—THE TRIOLET. Elsewhere in the pages of THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER a writer has explained the laws of form governing and underlying what we call “classical” music. To those who love art, in whatever guise it comes to us—as symphony, picture, or poem—a very slight amount of careful study of its accepted laws will repay a thousandfold the trouble taken. Having grasped even the faintest idea of the reason for the special shape of a sonata or a sonnet, the interest in the work itself becomes more keen. Then, too, it will be seen why literary men and artists choose the higher forms of their art to clothe their ideas. There is too often a feeling that the chief difference between popular and classical art is that the one is “dry,” while the other is pleasing. This is in part true, but only when scholastic rules are obtruded too prominently. For while it may be at once conceded that too great an attention to form produces dry bones, yet genius can make these live, for subject as they are to laws, and having clear sequence of form, they have inherent vitality and strength, relying on more than mere fashion to keep their hold on the people, in spite of the varying taste of each passing year.