How to Improve the
Initial and Median Stress of Your Speech

Force applied to syllables or words is called Stress, and may be Initial, Median, Terminal, Compound, Thorough or Intermittent

Here are some excerpts for you to practice your initial and median stress:

INITIAL

1. Go ring the bells and fire the guns, And fling the starry banners out; Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping ones Give back their cradle shout.

2. But it can not, shall not be; this great woe to our beloved country, this catastrophe for the cause of national freedom, this grievous calamity for the whole civilized world,-it can not be, it shall not be. No, by the glorious Nineteenth of April, 1775; no, by the precious blood of Bunker Hill, of Princeton, of Saratoga, of King's Mountain, of Yorktown; no, by the dear immortal memory of Washington, that sorrow and shame shall never be.

EVERETT .

3. "Now upon the rebels, charge!" shouts the red-coat officer. They spring forward at the same bound. Look! their bayonets almost touch the muzzles of their rifles. At this moment the voice of the unknown rider was heard: "Now let them have it! Fire 1"

CHARLES SHEPPARD.

4. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote! Sir, before God I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready to stake upon it; and I leave off as; I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment: - Independence now, and Independence forever.

WEBSTER.

MEDIAN

  1. How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh,
That vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear
Were discord to the speaking quietude,
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.

"Queen Mab." SHELLEY.

2. So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

"Thanatopsis." BRYANT.

3. And you, ye storms, howl out his greatness! Let your thunders roll like drums in the march of the God of armies! Let your lightnings write his name in fire on the midnight darkness; let the illimitable void of space become one mouth for song; and let the unnavigated ether, through its shoreless depths, bear through the infinite remote the name of him whose goodness endureth forever!

4. Father, Thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns; Thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They in Thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in Thy breeze,
And shot toward heaven.

God's First Temples." BRYANT.