TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 7 17 26 34 44 54 66 76 86 96 66 XIII. English Devotional Lyrics-Hymns....... 138 Concluding Chapter. The Larger Lyric List.......... 5 147 ENGLISH MEDITATIVE LYRICS INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER Lyric Verse.-Meditative Lyrics HIS is a form of verse that takes its name from the fact that it was originally sung to the accompaniment of the lyre or harp-poetry and music, in the earlier stages of civilization, being vitally connected. The oldest form of standard verse, as it is, also, the most natural and simple form, it stands, in these respects, as the first of the forms, and even at this late date in the history of criticism asserts its claim to the place of primacy. Less sublime than the epic and the tragic side of dramatic verse, and less graphic and pictorial than comedy, it possesses characteristics of a high order possessed by no one of the other forms, and has a wide and an important area of its own. Here and there are poems, such as Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," or Tennyson's "Princess," or Byron's "Corsair," that illustrate the possible connection of epic and lyric in English letters. The relation of the lyric and dramatic is closer and more frequently seen in that they are alike early and natural forms, alike comprehensive in their range and function, and have alike to do with the common and most personal experiences of men. 7 Some of the leading features of the lyric are that it is the most emotional or subjective of all the forms; that the feeling expressed is never represented or imitated, as in the drama, but is always that of the poet himself; and that it may be said to cover a wider area than any other form, there being, indeed, no phase of human experience that it does not express. Hence it will at once appear how large the province is which lyric verse covers, and how important the service is which it is designed to render in poetry and general literature, dealing, as it does, with all the high themes of human life and destiny. It is preeminently the poetry of the heart. Its special value may be seen in several particulars. First, in the manner in which it combines thought, feeling, and art in one poetic product. These are the three great elements of excellence in any poem-the intellectual, emotional, and æsthetic; sense, spirit, and structure. The undue presence of any one of them vitiates, to that extent, the integrity of the poem, and reflects as well upon the poetic genius of the author. Even so able a poet as Browning often so magnifies the intellectual as to impair the value of his verse. Mrs. Browning passes, at times, to the other extreme of the unduly impassioned; while such poets as Pope, Matthew Arnold, and Tennyson sometimes push the principle of artistic finish over the |