lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

SCOTT, BYRON, SHELLEY, KEATSUntroubling and untroubled where I lie ;The grass below—above the vaulted sky.Clare's natural, at moments poignant, note is theantithesis to the exotic lyrics of Thomas Beddoes. Ofexotics the nineteenth-century poets, exploring all theregions of older or foreign literature, are to producenot a few, but perhaps none are so entirely exotic asBeddoes' plays in the Elizabethan manner, and songsmodelled on the Elizabethan lyric, and on some of theshorter snatches of Shelley as " Music, when soft voicesdie" andFalse friend, wilt thou smile or weepWhen my life is laid asleep ?Beddoes essays both the sombre and the grotesquelyric after the manner of Webster'sHark now everything is still.His own morbid temperament contributed its shareto the peculiar effect he arrived at, but his successesare in lines and stanzas rather than in whole poems.The first stanza of the Dirge for Wolfram is Beddoesat his best:If thou wilt ease thine heartOf love and all its smart,Then sleep, dear, sleep ;And not a sorrowHang any tear on your eyelashes ;Lie still and deep,Sad soul, until the sea-wave washesThe rim o' the sun to-morrow,In eastern sky.In the same way the first two verses of "If there weredreams to sell" make a perfect lyric to which the63