Lyrical poetw, by definition, is a shon poem with one speaker who expresses thought or feeling. Unlike the epic or dramatic poetry it does not attempt to tell a story. The lyric poet addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own emotions, state of mind, and perceptions instead of that of a separate character. The word ‘lyric’ comes from the Greek stringed instrument the lyre. but with the advent of the printing press and mass literacy, few of the poems are meant to be sung. The most popular form of the lyric poem is the 14-line sonnet, either Petrarchan or Shakespearean. Other forms include the ode, the haiku, and the dirge. Starting in the late eighteenth century, the emerging Romantics embraced lyricism as a means of reflecting their own emotions and ideas upon the reader.
Matthew Arnold said, ”The true key, to how much in our Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this’ that they had their source in a great movement of feeling, not in a great movement of mind. The conception of the author perceived through his work was a new one for the critics of the time period, and a radical shift in literary criticism evolved. In order to interpret the author’s intention, one had to look into the events surrounding his or her life at the moment of composition. Western lyrical poetry has traditionally been associated with professions of love, though the genre is by no means limited to this subject. Common themes to be found amongst the lyric poems are religious sentiment, mythology, war and peace, grief and loss, and a reverence for nature.
Many poets of the Romantic era used imagery of plants, animals, weather, and other environmental forces as autobiographical metaphors. The poems often dealt with the relationship between humans and the so-called ‘natural’ world, arguing whether or not the two were separate or parts of a whole. William Wordsworth is arguably the lyrical poet of the early Romantics most often associated. With using the natural world as a means of conveyance. His style is one of personal engagement, inviting the reader to come along on his walks amongst flora and fauna. There is a sense of urgency behind his words, and the speaker is an active participant instead of a passive obscene/er of natural phenomena.
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An example of this style can be found in ‘Lines. Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey:‘ The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground. these orchard-tufts. Which at this season. with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms. Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of Vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods. Or 01 some Hermit‘s cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone.
Wordsworth interchanges imagery of a wild forest with that of cultivation and inhabited by man in such a manner as to show how connected the two sides actually are. He continues this theme throughout: And so I dare to hope. Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers. and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: The speaker bounds like a roe over the mountains, nversides, to wherever nature leads him. This, and similar verses, bear witness to an interchange of man and nature. John Keats, in the subsequent generation, called upon the natural world to help express the conflicted nature of human life.
In ‘Ode to a Nightingale,‘ Keats focuses on the immediate, concrete sensations and emotions, from which the reader can draw a conclusion or abstraction, From the first stanza, the poet is lulled to sleep by the song of a nightingale. He is caught in a reverie; the bird‘s melody awakens a pleasure in his subconscious that is so intense that it is painful. While listening to and obserVing the nightingale’s behavior. the speaker feels both a connection and an almost envious notion to be completely free of the trials and tribulations of humanity. ‘Fade far away. dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known.‘ The poet’s desire to be at one with the bird is so great that in the next stanza, he cries: ‘Awayl Away!
For I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,‘ Through self-reflection upon his impending death, in later stanzas the speaker distances himself from the nightingale, realizing that his dreams of bliss were unattainable fancy, To him, the bird’s song is now a requiem rather than a lullaby. He is thankful for the song, and having briefly felt an organic connection to a nonhuman creature, his death does not feel so meaningless and lonely. The song fades, as Will his life. Percy Bysshe Shelley often looked to nature as his muse, and expounded on the idea that humans, non-humans, and the elements themselves were part of one big collective.
In ‘Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni,‘ Shelley asserts that the universe and mind are connected to each other. on the same plane of existence and reality: ‘Dizzy ravrne! And when l gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy. My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around:’ In his History of a Six Weeks’ Tour and Letters from Switzerland, Shelley says.
Was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and. as an undisciplined overlong oi the soul. rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the Wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang”. The lyrical poetry of the Romantic era brought into light new concepts about the relationship between man and the environment. By using a single voice. the author draws the reader into his or her mind allowing a glimpse of the seemingly ordinary through the eyes of a poet.
