lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRY .Version of the Bible, Chatterton, Collins, and Gray.In the poems other than lyrical the poet oscillatesbetween the cadence of blank verse and the rhythmicalprose of Macpherson and the Bible. But in the songshe has learned from the Elizabethans the value oftrochaic and anapaestic rhythms:Love and harmony combine,And around our souls intwine,While thy branches mix with mine,And our roots together join.The wild winds weep,And the night is a-cold ;Come hither, Sleep,And my griefs unfold :But lo ! the morning peepsOver the eastern steeps,And the rustling birds of dawnThe earth do scorn.He knows, too, that, in song, rhythms can interchangemore readily than in spoken verse, trochee, or dactylpassing into iamb or anapaest:Memory, hither come,And tune your merry notes :And while upon the windYour music floatsI'll pore upon the stream, etc.But Blake's songs in Poetical Sketches are not of purelyliterary inspiration, like the Elizabethan songs ofBeddoes. Already in the love-songs and in A WarSong to Englishmen we catch a breath of the passionate,troubled experience that will in time put a greaterstrain on the lyrical forms than they are quite ableto bear. But the first effect of Blake's realisation ofwhat was to be the burden of his message in song and24