THE PARSING OF FINITE VERBS.

79. In parsing finite verbs we should state

1. Whether the verb be transitive or intransitive.1 2. The voice, if passive.

3. The mood, tense, number, and person.

4. The syntactical relations in which the verb stands to its subject.

The compound tenses should be parsed as though they were simple.

The autumn is old,

The sere leaves are flying;
He hath gathered up gold,
And now he is dying:
Old Age, begin sighing.

Word

is

Verb, intrans., indic. ; pres. agreeing with its

copulative

imperf. tense; 3rd per.; sing.

subj. autumn'

is dying

indic.; pres. agreeing with its

Verb, intrans. indic.; pres. agreeing with its

imperf. prog.; 3rd

subj. he'

per.; sing.

1 Copulative verbs like be,'' become,' 'continue,' 'remain ' are intransitive, but should be further described as copulative.

Exercises.

Parse the finite verbs in the following passages-

a.

b.

C.

d.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils.- Wordsworth.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.-Keats.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Howe'er it be, it seems to me

'Tis only noble to be good.-Tennyson.

Shelley.

e. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.-Shakspere. f. Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.-Tennyson.

g.

If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride
Who in their base contempt the great deride;
But, if that spirit in his soul had place,

It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace.

h. Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth.

i. I have been abused.

k. I shall have been here ten years at Christmas.

7. As it were with shame she blushes.-Tennyson.

m.

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Tennyson.

Which I have borne and yet must bear.-Shelley.

n. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.-Bible.

o. Speak! though this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold,

Than a forsaken bird's nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine-

Speak! that my torturing doubts their end may know.

Wordsworth,

PARSING OF INFINITIVES, PARTICIPLES, AND

VERBAL SUBSTANTIVES.

80. In parsing the infinitive state—

1. Whether the verb be transitive or intransitive. 2. Active or passive; perfect or imperfect.

3. Its syntactical relations: whether Subject, Direct Object, or Indirect Object; whether governed by another verb, or used to qualify a noun or adjective, &c. N.B.-Infinitives have no number or person. In parsing participles state

1. Whether formed from transitive or intransitive verbs.

2. Active or passive; imperfect or perfect.

3. Syntactical relations, whether qualifying attributively or predicatively.

EXAMPLE.

'Having completed my drawing, I went to see my brother felling his oaks; but a shower came on and compelled me to turn back. I returned thoroughly exhausted, and was glad to amuse myself with turning over the pages of a novel.'

Exercises.

Parse the infinitives and participles in the following passages:-Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

a.

b.

C.

By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.—Milton.
Hence, vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred!--Id.
The shrivelled wing,

Scathed by what seemed a star,

And proved, alas, no star, but withering fire,
Is worthier than the wingless worm's desire
For nothing fair or far.-Lord Lytton.

d. To spend too much time in studies is sloth.-Bacon.
e. There's little to earn and many to keep.-Kingsley.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest..
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.-Shakspere.
Bid me to live, and I will live

f.

9.

Thy Protestant to be;

Or bid me love, and I will give

A loving heart to thee.-Herrick.

h. Bid him go and tell his sister to come.

i. O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth.-Shakspere.

j. Passion, I see, is catching.-Id.

k Having been defeated once, he did not seek another engagement.

7. To seek philosophy in Scripture is to seek the dead among the living.

m. We shall often talk of this in days to come.

n.

My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.—Shakspere.

o. Teaching is the best way of learning.

p. I told him to ask his friend to come.

4. He was commanded to depart.

r. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.-Confucius.

s. A man lives by believing something, not by debating and arguing about many things.-Carlyle.

ANOMALOUS VERBS.

81. Some verbs are complete in their tenses, but deviate in some respects from the conjugation of both strong and

weak verbs. Others, as 'must' and 'ought,' are defective in certain moods and tenses. Both classes may be called Anomalous; the latter is commonly called Defective.

BE.

(Principal Verb and Auxiliary.)

82. The verb be is compounded of parts of four distinct verbs. Comp. am, are, be, was.

The compound tenses are regular.

Am (O.E. eom). The -m is a trace of an old pronoun of the

first person.

Cp. me, Lat. sum, &c.

H