Lyrics

“ Take for example, the Elizabethan love-lyric. Here is a single human passion, expressing itself in the moods and lyric forms of one brief generation of our literature. Yet what variety of personal accent, what kaleidoscopic shiftings of mind and imagination, what range of lyric beauty! Or take the passion for the wider interests of Humanity, expressed in the lyrics of Schiller and Burns, running deep and turbid through Revolutionary and Romantic verse, and still coloring—perhaps now more strongly than ever—the stream of twentieth-century poetry. ”

“ But the domain of feeling and emotion in which Lyrical Poetry has room to display its power and versatility is so extensive that lyrics are very various in their themes and in the treatment of them. Love, religion, patriotism, cosmopolitan benevolence, being, as I have shown in The Human Tragedy, the most elevated and most permanent sources of human sentiment and emotion, there will necessarily be in Lyrical Poetry, even considered by itself, and apart from all the other forms of poetry, a scale of relative elevation and importance. ”

“ A portion of what there is is also imperfect, ephemeral, and careless, but she has written one of the most perfect lyrics in the English language, and a number of others, which, in their melody, their interpretation of simple emotion, their vividness and strength, and their power upon the heart as well as the ear, have a place which few have equaled and none have surpassed in the lyric treasures of a land more rich than all others in the voice of poetry speaking to the heart in song. ”

“ Thirdly, lyrics are fit for the festive, the joyous, the amorous, the merry, for pleasantries of comrades; they please us when they are rightly sung. Those are not called poets who cannot compose a long work. ”

“ I took part in a conversation the other day, concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill, and command of language, we could not sufficiently praise. ”

“ If you can be regular and if you can be precise in the use of rhymes in your song-poem, be regular and be precise. Don't be irregular and slovenly just because others have been and succeeded. You will not succeed if you build your lyrics on the faults and not on the virtues of others. The song-poem that gleams like a flawless gem will have a wider and more lasting success—all other things being equal. ”

“ Secondly, lyrics which are but a small part of poetry and cannot command heart-piercing words—I may liken them to the bad bows of young hunters who cannot kill big game; they are able only to slay the small. ”

“ Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. ”

“ Clearly I call, keeping the melody, An old evening-singer unceasing in song, To earls in their houses I bring great bliss; When I chant my carols in varying strains, Men sit in their dwellings silent and still. Say what I’m called who mimic so clearly The songs of a jester, and sing to the world Many a melody welcome to men. ”

“ I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts. ”

“ But approximately defined, a lyric may be said to be a poem—short, vivid, and expressive of a definite emotion, appealing more to the eye than with any ultimate view of being set to music; a song, as a composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the intention of being accompanied by music. ”

“ In its original and simplest form, before she had interpolated a verse to express some of her theological ideas, it is the perfect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the world has responded, and it has a place like none other in the tongue of song. ”

“ The just notion and office of the modern song, as we think of it, is to be the embodiment and expression, in beauty, of some one of those sentiments or thoughts, gay, moral, pensive, joyous, or melancholy, which are as natural and appropriate, in particular circumstances, or to certain occasions, as the odor to the flower; rising at such seasons, into the minds of all classes of persons, instinctive and unbidden, yet in obedience to some law of association which it is the gift of the poet to apprehend. ”

“ Melody, Rhyme, Form.—Music and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child, and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony: no matter what objects are near it,—a gray rock, a grass-patch, an alder-bush, or a stake,—they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear. ”

“ Some are music and some are words, and some, like prayers, are feeling. The real song is in the thrush's heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs in Spring. When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush out, laughing—then you are making a song. ”

“ His scornful lips upon the instant sing,
⁠And all his pulses leap with ecstasies.
'Tis love the poet wants; he cannot live
Without caressing and without caress,
⁠Which all to charity his fellows give;
But I will wrap his soul in tenderness,
⁠And straightway from his lips will burst a song
⁠All loving hearts shall echo and prolong.
POET.
O Earth, and Sky, and Flowers, and Streams agushing,
⁠God made ye beautiful to make us blest:
O bright-winged Songsters through the blue air rushing ”

“ The power of words fitly set has made itself known, and a word has come to be judged like a note in music—as a potential element of harmony—a sound that in its own place may mean any emotion of joy or sorrow, hate or love. ”

“ Tears, laughter, complaints, sighs, defeat and triumph, blessing and cursing, all these mean for them song, melodious song, and the spring of emotion flows into a phrase that carries the voice to perfection, and sustains and favours the expansion of its peculiar beauty. ”

“ When we think of melody in speech, we immediately think of the lyric. In form and in spirit it approaches nearest towards music, for it is “emotion all compact.” When we have stimulated within us a noble emotion, we begin at once to respond in some rhythmic action, a beat of our foot, sway of the body, or humming in a tuneful way. There is melody in prose as well as in poetry, only it is not so pronounced. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” is a splendid example of prose-poetry. ”

“ You had the power of song, and you have always used it on behalf of the strong against the weak. You have smitten with all your might at creatures who are frail on earth but mighty in the heavens, at generosity, at truth, at justice, and heaven has withheld vision and power and beauty from you, for this your verse is but a shallow newspaper article made to rhyme. ”

“ Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong;
It was not song that taught me love,
But it was love that taught me song.
If song be past, and hope undone,
And pulse, and head, and heart, are flame;
It is thy work, thou faithless one! ”

“ Oscar Wilde's praise of rime—"that exquisite echo which in the music's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of a real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man's utterance into the speech of the gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre." ”

“ They express a peculiar poetic feeling which is sought for in vain in the epic age—a sentiment which, without art and without name, wanders on until it is caught up by fresh lips, and becomes the regular interpreter of the same feelings. Thus this simple voice of song travels onward from mouth to month, from heart to heart, the language of the general sorrows, hopes, and memories; strange, and yet near to every one, centuries old, yet never growing older, since the human heart, whose history it relates in so many changing images and notes, remains forever the same. ”

“ So much difficulty has been introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define what we mean by each. ”

“ What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. ”

“ There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. ”

“ Unmistakable genius rings in every line.'—Times.
'The ballads teem with imagination, they palpitate with emotion. We read them with laughter and tears: the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered words tingle with life; and if this be not poetry, what is?'—Pall Mall Gazette. ”

“ The rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmony are all an embodiment in sound, as distinguished from word, of what can be so embodied—the feeling of the poem, which goes before, and prepares the way for the following thought—tunes the heart into a receptive harmony. ”

“ How many times have we been warned that poetry is shaking off its shackles, and that rhyme and rhythm have had their little day? Yet now, as in the past, poets are dancing cheerfully in fetters, with a harmonious sound which is most agreeable to our ears. ”

“ His truest and highest faculty is revealed by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he soars above everything that can move laughter or tears, and makes the clear air thrill with the notes of a song as free, as musical and as wild as that of the nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the Birds. ”

“ The singing that haunts us, which becomes part of our life, which fills the memory with tender and happy images of other days and scenes, is not necessarily that of the finest voices, but of that mingling in music of voice and skill and feeling which weave an enchanted spell. ”

“ There beams a world of poetry and song.
Spellbound, entranced, inspired he stands.
Then from his smiling, parted lips
His soul breathes forth a poem.
The words come ready-formed,
In pretty, well-turned phrases ”

“ Now that all the fair dreams had been shattered by the selfishness of the courts and the bickerings of politicians, men asked, ‘What is the use?’ Turning inward to examine their own souls, they produced a delicate lyric poetry which contained just what the art-song of the time needed—the intimate and personal. ”

“ Speech is the normal method through which we make clear our ordinary thoughts, feelings, desires, repulsions, and attractions to those about us. Song is the finer flower of artistic expression, one of the means through which imagination and the creative and interpretative faculties find an adequate medium and outlet. But the words of the poem, whether spoken or sung, must first be thoroughly understood before the reader or singer attempts to make anyone else comprehend or feel them. ”

“ Their sweetest harps have broken strings,
Their grandest accords have their jars,
Like shadows on the light of stars,
And somehow, something ever mars
The songs the greatest minstrel sings.
And so each song is incomplete,
And not a rhyme can ever round
Into the chords of perfect sound
The tones of thought that e'er surround
The ways walked by the poet's feet.
"What ails the world?" he sings and sighs;
No answer cometh to his cry.
He asks the earth and asks the sky —
The echoes of his song pass by
Unanswered — and the poet dies. ”

“ Tragedy, comedy, the epopee, the novel, satire, the madrigal, epigram—or again, lyric drama, comic opera, oratorio, the cantata, song—these correspond to so many aspects under which things can be regarded, painted, or sung, or to so many natural modes of feeling, natural aspirations of the human soul. ”

“ If you know these ballads, you will find that they mirror perfectly your every mood. If you are weary and down-hearted, behold, a verse starts to your memory trembling with the very sigh you have heaved. If you are merry, a stanza is dancing to the tune of your own mirth. If you love, be you ever so much a Romeo, here is the finest language for your using. If you hate, here are words which are daggers. If you like battle, here for two hundred years have trumpets been blowing and banners flapping. If you are dying, plentiful are the broken words here which have hovered on failing lips. ”

“ The brief lyric, above all other kinds of poetry, should be finished in form and expression. The imperfections of diction that might go unchallenged in a longer poem are inexcusable in a lyric. Delicacy of thought and intensity of feeling constitute its breath of life, and should mold for themselves a beauteous form. What is commonplace, harsh, or unmusical in expression should be avoided, unless such diction is wedded to the thought. Concrete and suggestive words are to be used rather than abstract and vague expressions. There is always a distinct gain when the poem evokes pleasing pictures. ”