Edmund William Gosse

“ The temper of such pieces as “Arethusa” and “The Cloud” is indicated by a form hardly more ambitious than a guitar; Hellas is full of passages which suggest the harp; in his songs Shelley touches the lute or viol de gamba, while in the great odes to the “West Wind” and to “Liberty” we listen to a verse-form which reminds us by its volume of the organ itself. On the whole subject of the nature of lyric poetry no commentary can be more useful to the student than an examination of the lyrics of Shelley in relation to those of the songwriters of ancient Greece. ”

“ But outside what is pure epic and pure drama, all, or almost all, is lyrical. We say almost all, because the difficulty arises of knowing where to place descriptive and didactic poetry. The Seasons of Thomson, for instance, a poem of high merit and lasting importance in the history of literature—where is that to be placed? What is to be said of the Essay on Man? ”

“ Accordingly, although Lycidas and Adonais are not habitually “set to music,” there is no reason why they should not be so set, and their rounded and limited although extensive form links them with the song, not with the epic. There are many odes of Swinburne’s for which it would be more difficult to write music than for his Ave atque Vale. In fact, in spite of its solemn and lugubrious regularity, the formal elegy or dirge is no more nor less than an ode, and is therefore entirely lyrical. ”

“ Whether the great Alexandrian dirges, like those of Bion and of Moschus, on which our elegiacal tradition is founded, were actually sung to an accompaniment or not may be doubted; they seem too long, too elaborate, and too ornate for that. ”