lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRY •Arnold, and poets more properly the subject of ourconsideration. Certain varieties of popular song, aswell as the ballad, made appeal to the taste of poetswho had no liking for the fantastic or trivial wit ofDonne or Cowley or Waller, witness Addison's essayson Wit and on Chevy Chase ; and Percy and otherscultivated these, always a little "to advantage dressed,"made more elegant than the popular examples, e.g.Gay'sAll in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,and similar songs and ballads by Tickell and Gloverand Cowper. Lastly there was the hymn, in whichthis century, that Carlyle condemned as a howlingwilderness of scepticism, is singularly rich. " Our God,our help in ages past," " Christians, awake, salute thehappy Morn," "Come, O Thou Traveller unknown,""When I survey the wondrous Cross," "How sweetthe Name of Jesus sounds," "God moves in a mysteriousway," and others, familiar to many who knownothing of their authors, are of this century. Theyhave not the doctrinal range of the Latin hymns.They are strictly Evangelical, their theme the "fountainfilled with blood" which cleanses men of theirinherited or actual guilt. They have not quite allthe passionate quality of the German hymns of theseventeenth century, but they are genuine and movinghymns, not merely pious poems.What the eighteenth-century lyric in general lackedwas the note of ecstasy, the piercing note of joy orsorrow to which we have referred above, the "lyriccry." The poets were too sane. To approximate theconfines of pure poetry, to escape from the tyrannyof reason, one had to be a little mad—like Collins and20