English lyrical poetry from its origins to the present time

Preface

There is at present no history of English Lyrical Poetry ; it is with the idea of providing one that this volume is published. While it offers a sur\^ey of the whole field, it does not include every English writer of lyrics ; especially in the last three chapters have the exigencies of limited space compelled the omission of several important authors. It has been necessary to limit further the scope of this volume by reducing to a minimum, or neglecting entirely, all biographical details. With Burns, Moore, Blunt, Stevenson, and Davidson as chief exceptions, Irish and Scottish writers of lyrics have not been considered.

This book represents, in part only, a series of sixty lectures delivered annually since 1899 to members of the Senior Class at Yale College. The writer trusts that it may not only prove of interest to lovers of poetry, but that it may be of use in college courses.

To thank my pupils and friends for much valuable suggestion and criticism is an exceedingly pleasant obligation. I am especially indebted to my colleagues. Professors W. L. Cross, F. M. Warren, F. B. Luquiens, H. N. MacCracken, and Mr. C. F. Tucker Brooke who has aided me, most opportunely, in the thankless task of reading final proof sheets and in preparing the index. To Professor Henry A. Beers, who proposed this work and who has assisted me in countless ways, I wish to express my heartiest appreciation and gratitude.

E. B. R.

Connecticut Hall, Yale College.

Chapter Ten. Bibliography- Index

The Lyric defined. The Old English Lyric

The Middle English Lyric .

The Jacobean and Caroline Lyric .

The Lyric from the Restoration to the death of Pope

The Lyric of the Transition

The Lyric of the Nineteenth Century Part I . . . .

The Lyric of the Nineteenth Century Part II ... .

302 347

447 510 555 561

Chapter One

In Milton's Utopian scheme of education expounded in his letter to Hartlib, it is provided that pupils be taught "that sublime art which in Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyi'ic." It will be remembered that these students, not yet arrived at manhood, were no common spirits ; in addition to Greek, Latin, and Italian, they had mastered the Hebrew tongue "whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and the Syrian dialect" ; yet even such disciplined minds would find it impossible to learn from these critics and commentators the "laws of a true lyric." At the very beginning of our study, when we must establish at least a working definition, it is natural to turn to the father of literary criticism. We find that Aristotle does not concern himself with this form of poetry, for with the exception of three slight references to the writing of dithyrambs and nomes (hymns and chants sung to musical accompaniment in the worship of Bacchus and Apollo) he leaves the whole subject out of consideration:

" Nor Aristotle, with all his lore, Ne'er told of the properties of thy kind."^

^Poetics, I, ii, xiii; II, vi. "Aristotle passes over the whole of lyric poetry with the most scanty notice, partly, perhaps, because it was little composed in his day, but still more because its marked personal bearing restricted the universal element which he considered necessary to true poetry." E. S. Bouchier, Aristotle's Poetics, Oxford, 1908, p. 1, note. S. H. Butcher, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects, Boston, 1904, p. 198, remarks that Aristotle "passed over with deliberate neglect (for

One thing at least we may gather from Aristotle and the critics who followed him: poetry is to be considered under the threefold classification of the epic, the drama, and the song (whether it be the voice of a lone singer or of a chorus) and song is designated by the term "lyric."^ Modern criticism has accepted this classification, for, as Arnold observed, the tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was infallible and their categories of epic, dramatic, and lyric have a natural propriety. Considering these three forms of poetry, we find that the nature of the epic and of the drama is essentially unchanged since Aristotle's day and it is a simple matter to distinguish them as types in a few phrases. The lyric has greatly enlarged its scope so that we can not define it concisely and at the same time accurately. In the classification of literary types, hard and fast lines rarely can be drawn, for the different genres tend to approach and join each other. Not only is the lyric spirit manifest in both epic and drama — in Milton's "Hail, holy Light," in Juliet's "Wilt thou be gone.? it is not yet near day:" — but something of the epic and of the drama may enter into the lyric ; we have "narrative"

such it would seem to be) the great lyrical poetry of Greece — Simonides, Pindar, Sappho, Alcaeus, to none of whom does he make even faint

allusion Was it, perhaps, that lyrical poetry interested him only

as a rudimentary art — uttering itself in the form of improvised chants and dithyrambic hymns — which marked a stage in the development of the drama? .... May it not also be that in the personal outbursts of lyrical song, in the self-abandonment, the rush of feeling of Sappho or Alcaeus, he missed the characteristic Hellenic self-restraint?"

1 The Greek term for lyric poetry was fxiXos or fieXiK-// woiriais. "Les Grecs r^servaient le nom de po^sie lyrique k la chanson d'une part, et de I'autre k la grande po^sie monodique et chorale, c'est k dire, k des formes de po^sie plus complfetement et plus richement musicale. L'fil6gie et riambe 6taient d'une structure trop simple pour admettre une m^lodie varide." A. and M. Croiset, Histoire de la littSrature grecque, Paris, 1898, t. II, p. 43; see also "Melos" in Pauly's Real-Encyclopadie der Class. Alter.; E. Nageotte, Histoire de la poSsie lyrique grecque, Paris, 1888.

THE LYRIC DEFINED S

lyrics and what Browning has called "dramatic" lyrics. Distinctions are still more confused because the metrical differences that once separated these three kinds of poetry — in Greek literature, for example — have largely disappeared, and we frequently use the same verse form for both narrative and lyric poetry. Philip Ayres, a mediocre poet and translator^ and one of the first to entitle his poems lyrics, thought it necessary to defend his use of the iambic pentameter. "I have herein followed the modem Italian, Spanish, and French poets, who always call Lyrics all such Sonnets, and other small poems, which are proper to be set to music, without restraining themselves to any particular length of verse. And our grand Master of Lyrics, even Horace himself, has sometimes inserted the Heroic amongst his."^ To-day the lyric poet may employ any metre, and in the Princess Tennyson uses the same line for the narrative and the song:

" Now while I sang, and maiden-like as far As I could ape their treble, did I sing:

' Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green.''' "

It is then no easy matter to arrive at an adequate description of the lyric ; still we must attempt one, and for its first clause we follow the ancient critics in the simple statement that a lyric is a song. Before we add to this, it is important to consider for a moment the fascinating subject of song's antiquity.

As we become more civilized, we become more desirous of discovering the beginnings of our civilization. The man of science, the historian, and the poet have been attracted by this subject, and aided by the researches of ethnology and psychology, the philosopher and the student of literature

1 Lyric Poems, London, 1687.

have discussed vigorously the question of the earUest manifestation of poetry.^ On such a theme there must be theory and counter-theory, yet there is a growing disposition to accept the statement that the instinct of rhythm, which is at the basis of all poetry, is as closely bound up with man's intelligence as is his perception of light and darkness. Because our own sense of rhythm has become so highly developed, we do not consider it a primitive instinct. Apart from the conclusions of ethnology, in themselves a sufficient proof, there are many reasons for regarding it as old as the mind of man. All passions — love, anger, grief — of themselves seek rhytlimic utterance, and whatever our conception of primitive man, we admit that he was governed by the elemental feelings. From another viewpoint, Biicher has clearly proved that rhythm is bound up with all toil and play, which is merely another way of stating that a sense of rhythm is as old as the human race.^

The poetry which was the natural product of this rhythmic feeling was largely communal — a song or chant coming from the dancing, toiling, fighting throng or clan. With our intense individualism, the result of centuries of development, we are prone to reconstruct the antique world after the likeness of our own. Because with us poetry has become the art of a chosen few, we think of the primitive poet in terms of Gray's Bard; we picture him seated on some lofty rock, singing to the awed listeners below :

" With haggard eyes the poet stood ; (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air) And with a master's hand and prophet's fire, Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre,"

1 This whole matter has been adequately treated by Professor F. B. Gummere in The Beginnings of Poetry, N. Y., 1901. The footnotes of this volume furnish an excellent bibliography of the entire subject.

2 K. W. Biicher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, Leipzig, 1896.

but so far as the beginnings of poetry are concerned, modern critics have allowed this singer

" Deep in the roaring tide to plunge to endless night."

The first poets were but members of the singing, dancing throng, emerging for a moment to lead or improvise, then sinking back into the clan.^ Aristotle, remarks Professor Gummere, is quite in agreement with the conclusions of psychology and sociology when he derives tragedy and comedy from the clan song. Thus the lyric, the chorus, is the oldest of all poetic forms ; as old as self-consciousness, it lies at the very heart of the race and this consideration lends to our study a deeper interest. Our delight in the music of an orchestra or in the colors of stained glass is not lessened when we reflect that primitive man knew nothing of this, yet when we hear or read a song, expressing simply some of the great emotions of life, there comes a new significance as we catch in it the echo of a song old as humanity.^ A man may wonder at the stars without a thought of the innumerable years through which they have shone, but if for one brief moment such an idea has never entered his mind, he has never wholly seen them.

Returning now to our definition, we have stated that to the Greeks a lyric was a song. We must carefully avoid

1 H. M. Posnett, ComiJarative Literature, London, 1886, chap, ii. Early Choral Song. Cf. Gummere, op. cit., p. 92. "As the savage laureate slips from the singing, dancing crowd, which turns audience for the nonce, and gives his short improvisation, only to yield to the refrain of the chorus, so the actual habit of individual composition and performance has sprung from the choral composition and performance." See also Posnett, pp. 152-4 for a destructive criticism of Hugo's theory of the origin of the lyric set forth in the preface to Cromwell.

2 "Thus, looking on choral songs of war or peace as the primary sources from which literature has everywhere developed, we may accept the vulgar canon that all literature begins in song; but it is song widely differing in nature and in impersonal authorship from any to which modern art is accustomed." Posnett, p. 127.

giving to that word its modern, restricted meaning, for with us a song generally implies a short poem, limited to a small number of simple metres and depending for its effectiveness largely, sometimes entirely, upon the value of its musical accompaniment. With the Greeks, song was an all-embracing term ; it included the crooning of the nurse to the child, the half sung chant of the mower or sailor (forms of the lyric which did not enter into literature), the formal ode sung by the poet, and the great chorals, highly wrought in rhythm and diction, sung by the dancing chorus. The elegy was not considered a lyric, though modern historians of Greek literature class it as such. It is out of our province to characterize further the Greek lyric ; its extraordinary richness both of form and content must always be borne in mind. No two odes of Pindar are precisely alike in their construction ; in general, the Greek lyric poets disdained to repeat the measures of their contemporaries and even the ones they themselves had employed.^ We must therefore modify materially our conception of a song and in the study of the English lyric we include elegies, epithalamia, and odes, forms which we rarely associate with music.

The modern song differs from the Greek lyric in its simpler construction and in its greater dependence upon music. When our music is married to immortal verse, it becomes the better half. It is true that the most gifted composers seek to reflect and interpret the mood of a poem, yet we are prone to regard the musician's rather than the writer's inspiration as the more important element in a song. Too often the musician is unwilling to subordinate himself, and in many a song the words are to be considered merely as a starting point and we may neglect them entirely. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was but the

1 A. Croiset, La PoSsie de Pindare et les lois du lyrisme grec, Paris, 1880, p. 59.

handmaid of verse, for it was the poet himself who composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because lophon, son of Sophocles, had assisted him in the musical setting for some of his dramas.^

The very nature of Greek music made verse all important. The flute and the cithera, the poet's instrument, furnished a monotonous, colorless background for the words, and in the song, it was the poet rather than the composer who charmed.^ The odes of Pindar, the lyrics of Sappho and Alcaeus produced their effect upon Roman literature without their musical accompaniment, and we may appreciate the Greek lyric in utter ignorance of Greek music precisely as we enjoy reading the Irish Melodies, despite Moore's protest that they are of small value without their musical setting.

" When, round the bowl of vanished years

We talk, with joyous seeming, — With smiles that might as well be tears.

So faint, so sad their beaming; While memory brings us back again

Each early tie that twined us," —

Who remembers that these lines were set to the lively air of "The Girl I Left behind Me"?

We commenced our definition with the statement that the lyric is a song ; to this we now add, "or any poem written in a form or style considered lyrical by the Greeks." Thus Gray's Progress of Poesy is a lyric, not because of its song quality, but because it imitates a Greek lyric form.

We have dwelt thus far with the Greek conception of a lyric because we have inherited it ; but modern feeling seeks in verse new methods of expression, and we must accord-

1 Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts, London, 1903, p. 140.

2 Croiset, Pindare, pp. 73 flf.

ingly enlarge our definition. Even in Greece, music, once the inseparable companion of the lyric, became divorced from it. The musician constantly strove for freer utterance; only when music existed for its own sake and not as the setting for a poem could it develop as an art. Pratinas, the rival of Aeschylus in the satiric drama, found it necessary to chide the flutes because they were no longer content to be subservient to the verse: "The flute must follow; it is but a servant." On the other hand, the poet found that music was not necessary for the lyric since the melody of his words could surpass the sound of the flute or cithera. Thus the formal musical element was no longer the distinguishing mark of the lyric, though it never forgot nor can forget its origin in song. The undergraduate may sing Integer vitce scelerisque purus; it is doubtful whether Horace did.

Though the lyric became divorced from music, its inner nature remained unchanged. It was not in the epic or in the drama but in the lyric that the Greek or Latin poet sang of his own thoughts and emotions, for the lyric was personal, the other forms impersonal. The epic and . dramatic writers disappeared behind their heroes, but even in the greater lyrics, the triumphal odes, it is Pindar himself who addresses the victor, and the chorus is but his echo.^ In an even more marked degree, subjectivity is a determining characteristic, though not the only one, of the modern lyric. "Lyric poetry is the expression by the poet of his own feelings," is Ruskin's brief statement, while the historian of Greek literature, after remarking that the term lyric has changed its meaning since classic times, continues : "Pure \ emotion, unfettered imagination, thought freed from the ! care of action or of drawing conclusions, this is the real substance of the lyric."" Brunetiere, who emphasizes the subjective element, defines lyric poetry as the expression of the

1 Croiset, Pindare, pp. 99-102.

2Croiset, Histoire de la litt4rature grecque, t. II, p. 201.

poet's personal feelings in rhythms corresponding to his emotions/ So important does he consider the revelation of the writer's personality, that he would include Rabelais in a study of French lyrical poetry because he was one of the first writers to break with the impersonal manner of the Middle Ages.

A little reflection will show that the subjective element alone does not make a poem a lyric, and that we must draw a clear distinction between lyrical feeling and lyrical form. Samson Agonistes is profoundly subjective; few of Wordsworth's poems reveal his personality more plainly than does Tintern Abbey, yet these are not lyrics. Palgrave made a necessary distinction when he pointed out that to call a poem lyrical implies essentially that it turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation ; in other words, the modern lyric must be a short, musical expression of subjective feeling. The sonnet — frequently set to music in Italy of the Renaissance and Elizabethan England — generally fulfills these conditions ; even when a sonnet is descriptive or impersonal it often may be considered a lyric because of its music.

This musical element of the modern lyric is to be found in the melody of rhyme. Certainly the unrhymed lyric, Collins's Ode to Evening is a good instance, may possess a rare and subtle music, yet speaking broadly, rhyme renders emphatic the music of verse. Turning to the other part of our statement, that the lyric is a short expression of subjective feeling, it will be found that poems of considerable length are rarely lyrical throughout ; they may have lyrical moments, but they tend to become didactic, descriptive, or narrative. As a critic has Avell said, "The lyric is not only marked by the coloring of human passion, but by beauty and rapidity of movement," and this arises from its very nature.

1 F. Bruneti^re, L'lSvolution de la poSsie lyrique en France au dixneuvUme sUcle, Paris, 1894, t. I, p. 154.

Let us take the testimony of a poet whose genius was lyrical. In an interesting lecture entitled The Poetic Theory, Poe contends that there is no such thing as a long poem. He uses his critical terms loosely and evidently means by poetry, lyric verse ; his remarks, accordingly, are most pertinent. A poem, he states, deserves its title only insomuch as it excites by elevating the soul; but through psychical necessity, that degree of excitement which is necessary to constitute a true poem cannot be sustained throughout in a composition of any length. This statement is too dogmatic, yet underlying it is a sound principle.

We may now review our completed definition. All songs ; all poems following classic lyric forms; all short poems expressing the writer's moods and feelings in a rhythm that suggests music, are to be considered lyrics. This threefold statement is not free from ambiguity and does not remove all the difficulties that arise in determining whether or not a given poem is to be considered a lyric. For centuries the ballads were sung, yet as a class they are not songs but narrative poems, little epics.

" The king sits in Dumferling toune.

Drinking the blude-red wine, ' O whar will I get guid sailor.

To sail this schip of mine?' "

is not a lyric ; on the other hand, the more modem ballad of Fair Helen is of the very essence of lyric verse:

" I wish I were where Helen lies ; Night and day on me she cries ; O that I were where Helen lies On fair Kirconnell lea!"

Despite such an exception, we must distinguish with Ritson between "songs of sentiment, expression or even description" which are lyrics, and "mere narrative compositions, which we now denominate ballads."^ Again, coming to the third part of our definition, it is often a question whether the subjective element in a poem predominates sufficiently over the descriptive or didactic element to clearly establish it a lyric. Palgrave includes in his Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics Milton's Penseroso and L' Allegro, yet does not the descriptive element in them outweigh the purely lyrical, despite the fact that they have a song quality — Handel has given to them a characteristic setting — and that II Penseroso in a measure is a picture of Milton himself? There will always be poems on the border line of the lyric, yet in most cases our definition will determine what poems may properly come within our field of study.

We cannot dwell longer on critical distinctions, important as they may be, for our lyric poetry awaits us. There is, however, an objection sometimes raised against lyric verse which it is well to meet at the very beginning of our study. The lyric poet, we are told, enjoys not an absolute but a relative vision, for he is too fascinated by his own thoughts and feelings to have a deep sympathy with the life about him. Like a bird whose eyes have been put out, he sings because he is blind. The writei's of lyrics are a lesser clan, living down the slopes of Parnassus ; the epic and dramatic poets are the great masters of verse. In answer to this we may urge that the lyric still has something of the epic (witness the Miltonic sweep of Meredith's sonnet, Lucifer in Starlight) and of the drama, for it may possess a certain Odysseyan greatness in its portrayal of the wanderings of a soul, and the intensity of a Greek tragedy in its picture of a man struggling alone against his fate. But avoiding comparisons with other forms of verse, we may remind the

1 J. Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs, 2d edition, London, 1813. A Historical Essay on the Origin and Progress of National Song, p. i, note.

reader that the greatest study in life, and in hterature, wliich is but a manifestation of life, is the study of personality. Even when we talk of race problems and of national movements, our eyes are unconsciously fixed on the man, the leader. The lyric poet, whether he be prince or peasant, reveals himself to us ; in Browning's phrase, he is "unashamed of soul," and standing closer to us than any other writer, we know him at once. His expression of emotion is all the more poignant because he makes us his confidants. In the epic there are pages of description or narration before the crisis is reached; in the drama the characters must be introduced and delineated, but in the lyric we find ourselves instantly at the heart of the whole matter, and a single phrase can reveal the poet's world as a sudden flash of lightning illumines the landscape.

There is in the finest lyrics that highest quality of art — a charm that defies analysis. We may put our finger on the great scene that makes a tragedy immortal, but many a lyric lives not for what it says but for what it suggests. There are certain general rules which the epic and the drama observe ; the lyric is above any formula that may be devised. Many a dramatist has explained in detail how he wrote his play, from the selection of the theme to the last act ; many a lyric poet has testified that he cannot tell how or why he wrote a certain song — it simply "came to him." The lyric spirit is like Blake's spirit of love:

" the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly."

To sing with the infinite harmonies of rhythm and the melodies of rhyme ; to move by dim suggestion or to appeal with overpowering passion directly to the feelings; to present thoughts suff'used with emotion or ideas that concern the reason chiefly; to summon before the reader's mind by the

"magic incantation of a verse" exquisite colors and forms ; to touch the memory and stir the imagination — this is but a faint description of the art of the lyric poet.

As we began this discussion of the lyric by pointing out that it is the oldest of poetic forms, we may end it with the assertion that it is the most enduring. The verse epic, supplanted by the novel, no longer exists ; the poetic drama, at least in English-speaking countries, has but little vitality, for it is written under the shadow of the Elizabethans and gives us not life but the faint echo of a distant age. The lyric springs from life itself and so long as man thinks and feels, it can never disappear.

II

We have stated that the lyric is the oldest of all poetic forms and accordingly we must look for it in the very beginnings of our literature. The Roman historian, noting the traits of our Germanic forefathers, did not fail to mention their love of song. Whether or not Tacitus idealized the Germans to shame his own countrymen, there is no reason to suspect that he departed from strict accuracy when he speaks of their songs in praise of their divinities, or of what he calls "the well known songs" sung to inflame the warriors' courage as they rush into battle.^ If their religious songs were chiefly narrative poems relating the adventures and exploits of their gods, certainly we may assume that these battle hymns were more than a recital of old heroic deeds, and that they were essentially lyrical, for the chant of a tribe may be as true a lyric as the measured strophes of a Greek chorus. There were no scribes to take down these

1 Germania, ii-iii.

IJ^ ENGLISH LYRICAL POETRY

poems ; we have only the mention of Tacitus to recall the Germanic lays of Arminius,^ only a brief reference in the sixth century history of the Goths by Jordanes to remind us of the funeral songs composed for the death of Attila. Such passages, tantalizing in the extreme, are yet sufficient proof that our race, before conquering Britain, had a welldeveloped lyric tradition. If Tacitus writes of the battle choruses, the Northern sagas show us that bards and minstrels were familiar figures, and that kings themselves, in their last moments, sang defiance to their enemies. In the Old Lay of Atli (Attila), when Gunnar, king of the Goths, is taken prisoner and cast alive into a pit filled with deadly serpents, he meets his end like a hero. "But Gunnar, alone there, in his wrath smote the harp with his hands ; the strings rang out."^

It is not surprising that our oldest English poem — so scholars have entitled it — should deal with a scop or singer. The poem of Widsith, or the Far-Wanderer, purports to be an account by a much travelled bard of the many peoples he has visited and of the rewards he has received from their chieftains and kings. A single glance at his bare catalogue of princes and nations is sufficient to show that the wanderings of this Germanic Odysseus belong to the realms of fiction ; originally the poem may have recounted the travels of a famous singer, but in its present form, with its numerous interpolations, it presents to us but a purely mythical personage. Critics believe that certain parts of Widsith were written before the Angles and Saxons had left their old home, and this narrative poem offers accordingly one more proof that our love of song is an ancient heritage. Widsith tells us that he was received by the most famous kings ; they delighted in him and gave him presents — rings of gold —

lAnnales, II, 88.

2 F. B. Gummere, Oermanic Origins, N. Y., 1892, pp. 231-232.

when he "wdth clear voice raised the song, loud to the harp."^

The oldest English lyric, and the only poem in Old English written in strophic form with a refrain, is Dear's Lament. Like Widsith, Deor is a scop, but he has had nothing of Widsith's good fortune, for he has been superseded in his lord's favor by a rival singer — a situation which finds a parallel in Shakespeare's sonnets. Deor laments his sad fate and to comfort himself he recalls the woes that others have suffered and overcome. The song has but forty-two lines; the concluding strophe, in the Old English, is as follows :