Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/659

LYBIC POETRY. is often apparent in epic, dramatic, didactic, or otlier literary forms, it is distinguishable from them. The Ij'ric utters in the main only what is felt by the soul. It is a cry of the heart, sometimes joyful, Ijut more often sad. In lyric poetry, description, narrative, psychic analysis, and drama have little or no place, for Ijric poetry is emotional above all things. Therefore no true lyric can be of great length, for an emotion is soon spent or changed after a pause for recoveiy to an emotion of another kind. The more objective and impersonal poetry is, the weaker does the lyric element Ijecome. On the other hand, despite strong personality, or seeming eccentricity, a lyric poet in uttering his individual emotions can hardly help expressing what is felt bj' other men, and thus the tempera- ment of a race, its fears, regrets, yearnings, its sudden anger, its griefs and hopes, may find their outlet in lyric song. Though so complex and per- sonal a thing is necessarily indefinable, we may think of the lyric as a musical expression of emo- tions by language. If meant to be heard with music the lyric necessarily follows a beat or measure answering more or less to those of the instrument to whose music it is sung. Thus in antiquity lyric song was adapted to the lyre or harp, iledireval singers used other instruments, such as the rebeck, viol, bagpipe, and lute. The lute was a favorite instrument in Shakespeare's time. The very barbers kept lutes in .order that a waiting customer might while away his time with a lyric song. How much more lyric than we the Elizabethans were, is likewise proved by the fact that in playing Shakespeare we now- adays are robbed of the lyric passages, which managers cut out on the ground that they clog or delay the plot. By Elizabethan audiences the lyrics were relished like the other elements. Lyric i)oetry has usually been strongest and best among those races and at those times wherein individuality has manifested itself most potently. Thus it burst out in Greece when the monarchies were yielding to oligarchy and democracy. From the eighth century B.C. to the middle of the fifth a throng of poets were singing in Asia Jlinor. on the Greek mainland, and amid the isles of the Ionian Sea. Callinus of Ephesus. the creator of the Greek political elegy; Tyrtaeus, maker of those elegies which inspired the Spartans as they marched to battle; Mimnernius. composer of erotic elegies, with Solon. Theognis, and Phocy- lides; Archiloehus. Hipponax. and Simonides of Amorgos in the iambic; Anacreon, Alca>us, and Sappho in the love song; and finally Pindar and others in choral poetry, are all representatives of the Greek lyric.

In Italy. Horace. Catullus, Tibullus. Propertius, and Ovid put their personal emotions into verse, but lyric poetry never throve among the Romans, whose individuality was hampered by the State, nor were they a highly emotional people. Nevertheless the Roman soldiery sang satirical verses as they followed the triumphal chariot of a conqueror; the Romans have left us also a few bits in rhythmic septenarius verse, and their popular songs were probably imitated in the Latin hymns of the Church. For centuries lyric poetry seems to have been kept alive by the lower classes. About 1050 it began to bloom in Provence, whence it spread to Xorthern France. Sicily, then to L'mbria and Tuscany. Or. perhaps it were better to say that it began spon- taneously to flourish in these regions, although it was influenced in its growth by the poetry of the Troubadours. In L'mbria -Jacoponc uttered the emotions of a religious upheaval; in Tuscany Lapo (iianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoja, and Dante and Petrarch began to sing.

In Xorthern France Adam de la Halle, Gau- tier de Coincy, Colin Muset, Conon de Bethune, and others composed lyric poems, but Francois Villon (q.v.) was the first Frenchman to put himself, soul and body, into poesy. The lyrico- epic songs, called in the Middle Ages cluinsons d'histoire or chansons de toile, with motets, ro- troucnges, rondeaux, hallettcs, estampies, virelis, were well-known northern forms. The serrcntois wa.s also Provencal. The cluinson properly so called came from the south with the salut d'amoiir, the tenr^mi, and the jeux pnrtis. After languishing for three hundred years. French lyric poetry began to revive in the pro.se of Rousseau and reached its height in Victor Hugo. The French ballade, rondeau, triolet, and vil- lanelle (Ital. villanella) are well known from such English imitations as Austin Dobson's. English poetrj- before the Xorman Conquest was largely narrative, though it was often lyrical in the depth of its emotion. Deor's Complaint is the earliest h'ric known in Anglo-Saxon. Purely lyric poems appeared in the fourteenth centurj'. a century after 'alther von der Vogelweide's patriotic songs and love poems had. charmed Germany. To the fourteenth century belong several pretty love poems, beautiful hymns to the Virgin, ballades, rondels, virelays. and a series of political songs by Laurence ilinot cele- brating the exploits of Edward III. In Eliz- abethan days the lyric assumed the form of the song, the pastoral, the madrigal, and the sonnet. These spontaneous lyrics were succeeded by the love songs of the Cavaliers and the classic lyrics of ililton. After Hilton lyric poetry in England was choked by the critics, who were swayed by French influence. France had scarcely had any lyric poetry since the Pleiade ami JIaturia de Regnier. Tlien came Gray. Collins, Chatterton, and the more spontaneous Bums. Throughout the nineteenth eenturj- English poetry was mainly lyrical in temper and much of it was so in form. We are still and perhaps we shall al- ways be in doubt as to how lyric poetrj- arose and where, but the documents of literature allow us to follow the development of lyric poetry- from long before Christ to now. Xever had the lyric wider sway than in the nineteenth century. True, much, indeed most, of the lyrics of Goethe and of Heine, of Lamartine and Hugo, of Wordsworth. Keats. Shelley, and Byron, and later of Tennyson, Brownmg. and Swinburne, are not songs and were never meant to be sung: on the other hand, they hold the emotions of an immensely complex world.

Bibliography, Muller and Donaldson. History of the Literature of Ancient (rveece (trans. Lon- don, 18.50-58) ; Sellar. The Ronmn Poets of the Au(!ustan Afie (Oxford, 1892): Du :MiTil. Pol^sies populaires latines anterieures au Xlldme Steele (Paris, 184,'?) : .Jeanroy, Oriflines de la pofsie li/rique en Franee (Paris, 1889) ; G. Paris, La littdrature franraise au moyen dgr (Paris, 1890) : id.. Frnni:ois Villon (Paris. 1001): Orth, Vcber Reim und !ftrophenhnu der altfranziisischcn Lt/rik (Cassel, 1882) : Brune- ti&re, L'crohition de la pofsie lyrique en France