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Those two are enough for the infinite variety, the epic, the drama, the lyric, of our poetry. It is, accordingly, in these old traditional and proved metres that Swinburne's music seems to me most worthy, most controlled, and most lovely. There is his best dignity, and therefore his best beauty.
And in swinging and dashing lyric, again, Scott can hold his own with the best, if indeed "the best" can hold their own in this particular division with "Lochinvar" and "Bonnie Dundee," with Elspeth's ballad in the Antiquary, and the White Lady's comfortable words to poor Father Philip. The most really damaging things to be said against Scott as a poet are two.
The mingling of thought gave birth to a great literature, both creative and critical; to a striking body of lyric poetry; to a systematic theology, and a religious philosophy. While the study of the old Talmudic lore was maintained, the greatest teachers developed tradition afresh by a philosophical restatement designed to make it appeal to the mental attitude of the enlightened.
But while dramatic poetry declined, lyric poetry flourished. Lyric comes from the Greek word lura, a lyre, and all lyric poetry was at one time meant to be sung. Now we use the word for any short poem whether meant to be sung or not. In the times of James and Charles there were many lyric poets.
So in 1866 she again essayed to tread the stage as a lyric queen, in the rôle of Lucrezia, but the result was a failure. It is not pleasant to record these spasmodic struggles of a failing artist, tenacious of that past which had now shut its gates on her for ever and a day. Her career was ended, but she had left behind a name of imperishable luster in the annals of her art.
And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers, when they are under the influence of Dionysus, but not when they are in their right mind.
John Gould Fletcher's Japanese Prints is a collection of the daintiest lyric fragments, lovely as a butterfly's wing. But do such lyrics lack "adequate magnitude"?
The wave of emotion answering to the sensuously dramatic element having partly spent itself, the wave of lyric emotion gathers fresh strength, and one feels that one has reached the height of spiritual exaltation, while, nevertheless, there is not so much which one can describe to others who may not happen to have gone through with the same experience.
The hold she still kept upon his senses through his memory was strengthened by the knowledge which fretted him to the admission that she had wearied first that while her fascination was still potent to work its spell upon him, she had fled in a half lyric, half devilish pursuit of the flesh she worshipped.
Bidwell thinks his ordinary sort of girl a "lyric love, half angel and half bird, and all a wonder and a wild desire." Bidwell exaggerates, perhaps, but unless he feels this for his wife, he has no wife. Barbara obeyed the voice of her heart. That sounds sentimental, but it is none the less a courageous thing to do. I was inconsistent enough to be sorry because she loved a crippled man.
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