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It rhymes with "sue," "eyes of blue," "woo," and all sorts of succulent things, easily fitted into the fabric of a lyric. And it has the enormous advantage that it can be repeated thrice at the end of a refrain when the composer has given you those three long notes, which is about all a composer ever thinks of. When a composer hands a lyricist a "dummy" for a song, ending thus,
No lyricist wants to keep linking "love" with "skies above" and "turtle dove," but what can he do? You can't do a thing with "shove"; and "glove" is one of those aloof words which are not good mixers. And mark the brutality of the thing there is no word you can substitute for "love." It is just as if they did it on purpose. "Home" is another example. It is the lyricist's staff of life.
Hermann Hesse, who is often grouped with Strauss, is, in spite of his belonging to the same stock, a different nature; he is more of a lyricist, and his lyrical poems, though less well known, take perhaps a higher rank than his novels. Even in these the lyrical mood outweighs the human action; he ponders the riddles of nature more earnestly than the riddles of humanity.
But let us not blame the erring lyricist too much. It isn't his fault that he does these things. It is the fault of the English language. Whoever invented the English language must have been a prose-writer, not a versifier; for he has made meagre provision for the poets. Indeed, the word "you" is almost the only decent chance he has given them. You can do something with a word like "you."
There is the lyricist winning renown by the importation of a new kind of Greek song; and there is the observant critic and man of the world, entrusting to the tablets, his faithful companions, his reflections on men and things.
His untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, a short life like those of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Hugo Wolf has robbed the world of one of its noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist of power and worth."
VERGINIUS RUFUS wrote erotic poems, and an epigram of his is quoted by Pliny. VESTRICIUS SPURINNA was a lyricist, and had been consul under Domitian; a fine account of him is given by Pliny. The only Roman poetess of whom we possess any fragment, belongs to this epoch, the highborn lady SULPICIA. She is celebrated by Martial for her chaste love- elegies, and for fidelity to her husband Calenus.
Tiddley-tum, tiddley-tum, Pom-pom-pom, pom-pom-pom, Tum, tum, tum, the lyricist just shoves down "You, you, you" for the last line, and then sets to work to fit the rest of the words to it. I have dwelled on this, for it is noteworthy as the only bright spot in a lyricist's life, the only real cinch the poor man has. But take the word "love."
Gilbert had the advantage of being a genius, but he had the additional advantage of writing for a public which permitted him to use his full vocabulary, and even to drop into foreign languages, even Latin and a little Greek when he felt like it. And yet the modern lyricist, to look on the bright side, has advantages that Gilbert never had.
But the study of light upon the figure has been the special preoccupation of Manet, Renoir, and Pissarro, and, after the Impressionists, of the great lyricist, Albert Besnard, who has concentrated the Impressionist qualities by placing them at the service of a very personal conception of symbolistic art.
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