lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRYSung to Adam and to Eve,Here they he.When floods covered every hough,Noah's arkHeard that ballad singing now,Hark, hark.In dealing with the lyrics of the nineteenth century Ishall have to touch on, or pass over, many fine mockingbirds,poets who catch with singular skill the tone andmusic of the lyrics of the greater poets of the day,yet are not great lyrical poets. Clare's is an authenticvoice, if it has not many notes, perhaps only two—thisdeep love of nature, and an accent of hopeless sorrowas piercing as Shelley's, if more subdued; for example:andLove lies beyondThe tomb, the earth, which fades like dew,I love the fond,The faithful, and the true, etc.,1 am ; yet what I am none cares to know,My friends forsake me like a memory lost ;1 am the self-consumer of my woes,They rise and vanish in oblivious host,Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost ;And yet 1 am and live with shadows, tostInto the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into the living sea of waking dreams,Where there is neither cense of life nor joys,But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems ;And e'en the dearest—that I loved the best—Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.I long for scenes where man has never trod ;A place where woman never smil'd or wept;There to abide with my Creator, GOD,And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:62