United States or Turkey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is in these short lyrics of personal passion or emotion that the genius of Catullus is most eminent; but the same high qualities appear in the few specimens he has left of more elaborate lyrical architecture, the Ode to Diana, the marriage-song for Mallius and Vinia, and the Atys.
He also wrote a series of stirring lyrics which, voicing as they did the general sentiment in Ireland at the time, became extremely popular and had a widespread effect. These were afterwards collected under the title of Fugitive Pieces.
After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics.
It is lost to view, often, in the sincerity and pathos of his lyrics, but it is felt in most of his longer efforts in prose, and accounts for a certain dissatisfaction which many grateful and loyal readers nevertheless feel in his criticism.
Probably the little book won no attention; it is not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death.
"I should have explained some of these phenomena to you," whispered the publisher presently, noticing that Henry looked a little bewildered. "This is a young Irish poet, who, in the intervals of his raising the devil, writes very beautiful lyrics that he may well have learned from the fairies. It is his method to seem mad on magic and such things.
It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature. His picturesque books of travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian idyls, his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Christian sweetness of Lars, and the high argument and rhythmic marvel of Deukalion are sureties of the permanence of his reputation.
His poems, though full of fine and subtle thought, are, with the exception of some short lyrics, deficient in form, and the hexameters which he employed in The Bothie are often rough, though perhaps used as effectively as by any English verse-writer. M. Arnold's Thyrsis was written in memory of C. Theological and social writer, was b. near Dublin.
They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the truths of theology, as Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their noble lyrics. So that the most rapt and imaginative of men, if artists, utilize the whole realm of knowledge, and diffuse it, and perpetuate it in artistic forms. But real poets are rare, even if there are many who glory in the jingle of language and the structure of rhyme.
The former was the stronger in judgment, the latter in fancy. The plays contain many very beautiful lyrics, but are often stained by gross indelicacy. The play of Henry VIII. included in Shakespeare's works, is now held to be largely the work of F. and Massinger. Subjoined is a list of the plays with the authorship according to the latest authorities.
Word Of The Day