lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRYnot very happy attempts. Just as dramatic poemsput into the mouth of rustic gossips they are no betterthan, if as good as, Southey's English Eclogues andsome of his ballads in the same popular style. It isthe something more which Wordsworth adds, sometimesin a single stanza, as when in Simon Lee afterstanzas about his thick ankles and his aged wife youare suddenly lifted to a rarer atmosphere:I have heard of hearts unkind, kind deedsWith coldness still returning ;Alas ! the gratitude of menHath oftener left me mourning ;and this atmosphere invests the whole of those poemsin which Wordsworth is from the first at his best.In them even when the theme is still a simple one,verging even on the ludicrous, the poet is no garrulousbabbler but a singer. The ballad is lyrical:You say that two at Conway dwell,And two are gone to sea,Yet ye are seven !—I pray you tell,Sweet Maid, how this may be.But the lyrical inspiration is purest and strongest whenhe forgoes the dramatic story altogether and poursforth in rhapsodical strain his sense of the joyous andabounding life of nature and its profound significancefor the heart "that watches and receives," as in "Iheard a thousand blended notes," " It is the first mildday in March," or:The eye it cannot choose but see ;We cannot bid the ear be still ;Our bodies feel where'er they be,Against or with our will.It is with Wordsworth as with Blake.32The pro-