Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE LYRIC History The Greeks were accustomed to divide their song into two great classes: melic or lyric poetry, which was the expression of an individual singer’s emo- Original tion, to the accompaniment of the lyre; Significance and choric poetry, which represented some strong communal feeling and was composed for choral singing, supplemented by instrumental harmony and possibly appropriate dance-movements. Out of the first of these have been evolved our modern conceptions, none too distinct, of lyric quality and lyric form in verse, ?conceptions in which the original significance of the word
lyric
has been lost completely. In the process the second or choric class has been found to have all the essential qualities of the first, and the entirely superficial distinction between one singer and a homogeneous chorus has been broken down. A good Greek lyric had in it all the possibilities of later, T . developments, as appears from examina- Greek Lyric, r, r c, tion of?for example?a song of Sappho.
Blest as the immortal gods is he, The youth whose eyes may look on thee, Whose ears thy tongue’s sweet melody May still devour. Thou smilest too sweet smile, whose charm Has struck my soul with wild alarm. And, when I see thee, bids disarm Each vital power. Speechless I gaze: the flame within Runs swift o'er all my quivering skin; My eyeballs swim; with dizzy din My brain reels round; And cold drops fall; and tremblings frail Seize every limb; and grassy pale I grow; and then?together fail Both sight and sound. 1 This is clearly the expression of an emotion rising in the heart of the singer, yet common to hosts of lovers who lack the power of phrasing it. In this case vividness is secured by aid of the imagination, but there is c…
