lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRY,influence of the Hebrew scriptures. It is in lighterstrains that the romantics more often expressed theirmoods and dreams.A full and adequate treatment of the lyrical, subjectivestrain in nineteenth-century poetry would,therefore, have to include a good deal of poetry whichis not strictly lyrical in form. It will be wiser to considerwhat is thus formally lyrical with occasionalreference to poems like, say, Shelley's Lines Writtenamong the Euganean Hills, which, though lyrical incharacter, do not come under the heading of eithersong or more elaborate ode. We shall accept theGreek classification and confine ourselves to the lyric."The tact of the Greeks," says Arnold, "in mattersof this kind was infallible. We may rely upon it thatwe shall not improve upon the classification adoptedby the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categoriesof epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a naturalpropriety and should be adhered to." It was not,however, simply a matter of tact and "natural propriety."The division was determined by the conditionsunder which each of the kinds named was tobe produced,—spoken on the stage; recited, intoned,chanted; sung to the accompaniment of music and,it might be, of dance. Lyric poetry was poetry writtento be sung, to be sung on quite definite occasionsfor quite definite purposes, religious or secular—theHymn, the Paean, the Hyporchem, the Nome, theDithyramb, Dirges, and Wedding Songs, nature songssuch as the Linos and the song of Adonis. All songswere composed for music, and the greater numberfor an elaborate dance accompaniment as well. Themonodic, subjective lyric of the Lesbian schoolflourished for only a short time; and this too, though10