lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRYI send my heart up to thee, all my heartIn this my singing.For the stars help me, and the sea bears part,The very night is clingingCloser to Venice streets to leave one spaceAbove me, whence thy faceMay light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.For some of Browning's lyrics " exotic" is too dignifieda word. Nationality in Drinks and others are in thenature of freaks, for some of his feats in rhyming arenot unlike what delights one in the Ingoldsby Legends.But of Browning's more serious lyrics it is necessaryto speak a little fully, for his critics have spent so muchtime over Browning's thought and his various themes,that, except for Professor Saintsbury's appreciativeanalysis of his prosody, too little attention has beengiven to his art as stich. And one may begin with hisfirst experiment, in what is almost a lyrical drama,Pippa Passes, the story of the little silk-winder of Asolowhose songs as she passes various houses on her oneday of holiday precipitate one dramatic crisis afteranother. These are Browning's first dramatic lyrics;lyrics, that is, which are supposed to be sung not bythe poet in his own person—like those of Blake aridBurns and Shelley and Keats and Wordsworth—butby an imagined character, and not only that but a songwhich implies a story. In this case the story is told,not implied, and in James Lee's Wife and In a Gondolathe setting is elaborated, though not into so completea story as that of Pippa. But in almost all Browning'ssongs a story is implied and, as in Pippa also, a greatdeal is made of the setting, the scenery. ConsiderCristina, A Lover's Quarrel, A Pretty Woman, Time'sRevenges, A Light Woman, The Last Ride Together, By72