combination of vowels and consonants; the liquid consonants l, m, n, r, produce the most obvious effect of smoothness, as we see in many a haunting quotation:

The tone quality of a lyric is hard for some people to appreciate when the intellectual content of the poem is slight. Their problem is then much as if they were listening to pure music and trying to discover its "meaning." Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my Love" (p. 5) says very little intellectually; rhythmically, too, it is extremely simple; but the tone that distinguishes it from beginning to end, with a faultless consistency rare even in the best lyrics, has made it in some respects the most significant of Elizabethan songs -significant of the worship of ideal beauty and of the gift of music only at that time characteristic of the English race.

Because word rhythm and word melody are conveniently described in terms of music, some confusion is likely to result as to the relation between music and verse. The two arts, for practical purposes, are distinct, and cannot be confused without some loss to each or either. The fact that the lyric in Elizabeth's time was rich in melody and rhythm cannot be explained by the public ability at the time to play the lute, or the educated gentleman's ability to sing a part in a madrigal, any more than the frequent harshness of Browning's verse could be cited as proof that he was not an accomplished musician. We know, of course, that his skill in music was great; and that Tennyson, who excelled him in verse melody, knew nothing of music; and that Edward Fitz-Gerald, who translated "Omar" into liquid verse, was a musician. So all combinations of knowledge and ignorance in the two arts are possible, and there is no necessary relation. The speaking voice, for which poetry is composed, is essentially an instrument of percussion, like the piano, and its words must be uttered with a

certain speed before they make their effect. Song or ordinary music is prolonged sound, and needs an instrument of sustained tone, like the singing voice or the organ. The old ballads were sung to tunes which now are forgotten, because the words were much more important. Yet the words show in certain rhythmic peculiarities that they were fitted to musical exigencies, as is the case with most of Shakespeare's songs, like "Come away, come away, Death" (p. 41). Had the words made no stronger appeal than the notes, they would not have found their way into this or any other anthology, but would have been preserved, if at all, as incidental to the music.

What music once accompanied the lyric is of little consequence to the young student. Of much greater importance is his ability to feel in the poem the expression of more than the words, - that approximation to the condition of music which is found in the rhythm, the time, and the tone. Oral readers of poetry may usually be classified according as they value the intellectual content of the verse, reducing it to prose, or the melody of it, turning it often into a chant. It is said that the great poets monotoned their lines in what might seem to be a singsong; so Tennyson, in particular, read. Whatever our taste in that matter, we should retain our grip on the one important truth that the lyric, above all other literature, is emotional; and we are not reading it wisely if it does not reach our emotions before it reaches our brain.

II

When a lyric is composed the process in the poet's mind is perhaps something like this: an emotion is aroused in him by some stimulus; that emotion possesses him until it begins to take a definite rhythm in his mind, as the photographic film is developed and takes form in the chemical bath; when the rhythm is unmistakable to his inner ear, the poet writes his lyric. To him the terms in the process are stimulus, emotion, and rhythm. To the reader, however, the poem must present itself in a different order. He perceives the rhythm first, and by the rhythm he is prepared for the emotion that produced it; by a solemn rhythm he is prepared for a solemn emotion; by a joyous rhythm he is prepared for joy. If the emotion is to be altogether

intelligible, the reader must come at once upon some explanation of the stimulus; otherwise he cannot appropriate to himself imaginatively the poet's experience. Therefore the stimulus, in the average lyric, must be the second thing that the reader or hearer perceives. After the emotion has been felt and explained the lyric is occupied with developing it.

In the average successful lyric the stimulus is made clear in the opening lines. In Lovelace's "To Lucasta ” (p. 94) it is evident that the lady has just accused the lover of unkindness, and the taunt has stirred him to this spirited defense. In the opening paragraph of "Lycidas ” (p. 73) the occasion of the poet's grief is stated more elaborately; so the patriotic stimulus is announced at the beginning of Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic" (p. 255). The stimulus may be found in any human experience, in conversation, as in Lovelace's song; in nature, as in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" (p. 353); or in art, as in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (p. 360). In all these cases the reader is aware of the cause of the emotion in the poet, and it becomes the cause of emotion also in himself; it makes concrete and rational what would otherwise be only a vague atmosphere of feeling created by the rhythm.

The experience of an emotion, however, has sometimes other phenomena, which to the poet seem more important even than its stimulus. For example, he may find some aspect of nature in remarkable sympathy with an habitual emotional state of his, and that sympathy may appear to him of vastly more importance than the original cause of his mood. To express his mood he may then depend upon the rhythm and the context of the poem; he perhaps will not try to explain it. In the "Ode to a Nightingale " (p. 302) Keats tells us that he is extremely unhappy, and that the nightingale singing near by seems to be the very voice of his soul. The intention of the poem is to make us feel Keats's recognition of his own mood and aspirations in the nightingale. We know from other sources that the sorrow which beset him at the moment was the death of a favorite brother, but that fact is not important to the poem, and is therefore omitted. In Wordsworth's "The Daffodils " (p. 314) the poet's mood, before the daffodils have gladdened him, is peculiarly empty. He

was walking alone, we are told, but whether he was sad or gay or just absent-minded, we are not told; it is not necessary to the poem.

Lyrics intended to be sung in drama often omit the stimulus altogether, because it is implied in the dramatic situation or explained in the character of the singer. Such lyrics of course would be unintelligible if we were not thoroughly familiar with the play; the two fairy songs from "The Tempest ” (p. 2) would seem the most arrant nonsense if we did not know Ariel and the other characters in that most poetic drama; and what verdict would a fearless reader pass upon the famous "Tell me where is fancy bred” (p. 44), if he did not know of Portia's desperate craft to evade her father's command and hint to Bassanio the relative worth of the caskets?

Some very short poems are classed as lyrics which not only are narrative but seem at first to be absolutely without emotion, poems like Scott's "Proud Maisie is in the wood" (p. 279), or Campbell's "Earl March look'd on his dying child” (p. 246). The fact is, this type of lyric consists of the expression of the stimulus rather than of the emotion it stimulates. The most important part of the lyric is in the feelings of the reader. To be sure, all art arouses emotion in the beholder or hearer, and to that extent all art is lyrical; but the apparent detachment of this kind of song, the impersonal manner that at first appears to be the very absence of feeling, is the actor's skill in making the spectator live the part. Success in this kind of lyric is rare, and the examples of it included in "The Golden Treasury," especially the selections from Scott, are among the most artistic lyrics in the language.

Important as the stimulus is in the inward structure of the lyric, the development of the emotion is usually, of course, the chief object of the poem. Any emotion is short-lived; it subsides gradually until the mind is reëstablished in a state of normal calm. Therefore the record of the development of emotion in the lyric must be brief, and it concerns itself with the reëstablishment of the intellect over the feelings. As the lyric progresses, the emotion is likely to run thin, and unless the poet has the taste to stop in time, the end of his song will be didactic or moralizing or narrative, — anything but lyrical. Our habitual ways of thought are matters of convention; we think

correctly on the great subjects; therefore our cold-blooded pronouncements on those subjects differ from age to age, as the fashions change, and those cold-blooded conventions make their appearance at the end of the lyrics. In the least controlled part of the emotional experience, the immediate reaction to the stimulus, the poet reveals most of himself; yet, strange as it may seem, the lyric in that personal revelation changes least from century to century, from land to land; for men are of one blood in their genuine feelings, and they are estranged chiefly by artificial habits of thought. The sonnets of Shakespeare and the love songs of Burns have often the same stimulus, and where either speaks his true emotion he is contemporary to the other; they differ in the use to which they put their emotions and the way in which their natures recover their normal state.

The best illustration of this analysis of the lyric can be found in the funeral poem or elegy, which from the lament of Moschus over Bion has had a traditional career in the poetry of Europe and a very brilliant career in English poetry. This type of lyric, expressing grief for a dead friend, begins with a statement of the cause of the sorrow, the stimulus of the emotion. As the grief subsides, those questions suggest themselves which are common to all human loss, - Why was this man taken and another left? or, Why should we strive for our ideals, if the accidents of life so cruelly defeat us? In the third section of the elegy the poet's habitual reason is again in control of his emotion, and he comforts himself in the conventions of his time and country. The first and second portions of the elegy in English are, for all the famous illustrations, practically the same; Lycidas” (p. 73), in the opinion of many competent critics, is the noblest example of the English type. The third section, giving the consolation, is very individual in each elegy. Milton has hope of Christian immortality; Shelley, in "Adonais," has a glimpse of the immortality of beauty; Tennyson, in " In Memoriam,” comforts himself with the general promise of evolution; Arnold, in "Thyrsis," turns to the prospect of a heroic culture. These resemblances and differences are as true of other kinds of lyric as of the elegy.

We could put the matter in a slightly different way by saying that the possible stimuli of the lyric are very few; there are few primary