Text: Richard George Temple Coventry, “What Makes the Perfect Lyric?,” Academy (Covent Garden, London, UK), vol. LXIX, whole no. 1748, November 4, 1905, pp. 1149-1151

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WHAT MAKES THE PERFECT LYRIC?

EDGAR ALLEN [[ALLAN]] POE in his Philosophy of Composition, endeavoured to explain step by step the making of his famous poem, “The Raven.” But he who would write a perfect lyric could follow no method more fatal to success than that which Poe pursued. In a previous paper I insisted on simplicity as characteristic of the finest lyrical poetry — simplicity of metre and expression. Poe, on the other hand, sought to make his effect by means the reverse of these. In the first place he chose the refrain to produce his effect, in the second he relied on the originality of his metre to make that effect stronger. Now, the use of the refrain, besides being bad art, betrays, as a rule, a barrenness of invention, while a poem that relies on the originality of its metre is usually original in that and nothing else. It was only Poe's rare faculty of imagination, combined with a natural gift of style that — as one of his critics remarks — saved such a precarious feat of word-play as “The Raven,” from being merely laid aside in the cabinet of the literary curio-hunter. And it is remarkable how few are the lyrics of abiding excellence which make use of the refrain, or of which the effect can be attributed to aught but their own intrinsic sweetness. The Epithalamion and Prothalamion of Spenser are striking examples of the weakening effect of the refrain, its use in these poems being to introduce an air of monotony and to lessen the impression produced by destroying the individuality of the different stanzas. The ear is gradually filled with the sing-song of the refrain, until the whole poem is resolved into the two unvarying lines. Whether Poe meant his Philosophy of Composition [page 1150:] seriously, and intended it to be so taken, or not, is a matter of no moment, because his methods make no appeal to the true artist. That they produced a poem like “The Raven,” is a literary surprise which is not likely to be repeated. And that Poe's outlook and judgment on poetry were neither very broad nor very deep, is clear from his extravagant praise of Tennyson and corresponding and corresponding contempt for Wordsworth. Of the former he said: “I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived”; while of the latter he could say nothing better than: “I have no faith in him.” But the subject of this paper is: what makes the perfect lyric — not how it is made — and Poe's Philosophy of Composition has merely been cited to show how it ought not to be made. For if the poet is born, not made, the perfect lyric is not the outcome of his art save in so far as that art is the natural expression of himself. In other words, a poet must be a man first, and a poet afterwards, if he is to make a bid for immortality. For a poet is only a man who can express more sweetly and forcibly than his fellows that which they also see and feel. In most of our finest lyrics the humanity of the poet is the dominant note, the note which gives them their peculiar charm and sweetness. And this is true not only of those lyrics which are concerned with the passions of the heart, but also of those which seek to portray the beauties of nature. Indeed, Sir Joshua Reynolds confessed himself unable to discover any charm in a landscape picture from which the human element was absent. So, a mere catalogue of the beauties of nature without reference, direct or indirect, to the influence of those beauties on the writer's heart or mind has the same unsatisfying effect as would the painted scenery of a play without actors. The charms of nature are accessories only to the poet's art, and must be used to heighten the effect which he desires to produce on the feelings of his readers. They are the background which lend light and shade to his utterances. And it is this power of identifying himself with nature, and of making her serve his moods that distinguishes the true poet from the mere versifier. That this is true must be confessed after a perusal of the lyrics of Burns, and Wordsworth, and Shelley, and the odes of Keats. And — to take Wordsworth first, to whom nature never spoke or looked with the voice and eyes of hopeless passion or disappointed love, but who regarded her rather as a child does its mother — it is impossible to find among his greater lyrics one wherein the human note is not predominant. For in him the meanest flower could awaken thoughts too deep for tears. He regarded nature as the symbol of all that is pure and sweet and undefiled. The voice of the cuckoo was as the voice of immortal youth, the dance of the daffodils an inward and abiding bliss, a flower's purity touched an infinite pathos. No poet before Wordsworth, as none after him, has succeeded in identifying himself so thoroughly with the inner beauty of nature. And that is why he has left so many lyrics of such exquisite thought and expression. For, as he himself said: “To the solid ground of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.”

Burns's outlook on nature was much narrower than that of Wordsworth, because for him her beauties were so often tainted with the melancholy hues of an unhappy love. He made use of her to accentuate the agonies of parting and separation or to sadden the face of memory; she speaks to himself alone, and the race of unhappy lovers. But in the art of using the grace and loveliness of nature to throw into stronger relief the pangs of disappointed love, Burns stands supreme. “Ye banks and braes o’ bonie Doon” has never been surpassed in that wide yet difficult path of poetry which looks for its effect to the contrast it draws between the outward calm and beauty of external objects, and the inward pangs which they inflict upon the heart. How beautiful and haunting is the beginning of this lyric! Indeed, the first stanza is a poem in itself:

Here the scene is put before our eyes in a few simple words with the note of pathos already heard in the poignant questioning of the second and third lines, to culminate in the despairing human cry:

Truly a complete and perfect poem. Truly a complete and perfect poem. The after verses, in their explanation of the singer's sadness, are in a descending scale; the climax is reached in the first verse, the high note of passion is struck; all that should be told is said. There is no opening stanza in any lyric in the language which has set its succeeding verses such an impossible task as does the first verse of this wonderful “Banks and braes.” But, though a poet may touch the high note of passion in a single verse and satisfy his own ideas of what constitutes the finest art, he cannot so satisfy others whose ears are not so fine and whose perception is less keen. Having heard the best, they want more and are not particular if it be of inferior quality. And perhaps Poe in his admirable Poetic Principle” was right in his contention that a very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produced a profound or enduring effect. But Poe should have gone further, and given as the reason for this the fact that the mass of mankind is unimaginative, and that it is only the few who find a greater charm in suggestion than in actual expression. For suggestion, which is really the πάθος that Aristotle demands of all great poetry, is the sign-manual of the finest poetical genius. And the poem which Poe quotes as an instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem — perhaps the most nearly perfect love-song in the language — would have been a purer gem without the third and final verse, with its descent from the pure air of dreams to the world of materialism.

But it would be idle to suppose that “Ye banks and braes” would occupy the place it does, or indeed to imagine that it would occupy any place at all among the immortal poems of the world on such a seemingly slender support as its first four lines; and yet there are four famous lines by the same author which may be said to have produced the effect of a complete poem, in which the whole of love's tragedy is expressed:

And if, as has been truly remarked, a collection of the finest poetry in the world would fill but a slender volume, yet how much slimmer would that volume be if the poems contained therein were reduced to their proper proportions.

But if the power to suggest a beauty, or a joy or sadness beyond what is visible in the words of a poem is a proof of poetical genius, it is more especially true of that genius which is essentially lyrical. Our finest lyrical poets are they whose poetry suggests more than it expresses, who haunting and elusive music beyond expression. And this have breathed into the dead forms of human speech a power has a hundred gradations, and is shown in a hundred different ways. It is apparent in “Drink to me only with thine eyes” — “those honey-sweet words which Ben Jonson stole from the Greek, and yet marred not in the stealing. Εμοí δὲ μόνοις πρόπινε τοîς φμμασιν ... Εί δί βον́λει το̂ις χείλεσι προσφίρονσα φλήμάροω φιλημάτων τό ικπωμα καί ο̂ντως δίδον. Wordsworth had it:

And Shelley:

Coleridge was a master of the suggestive method; indeed, as his fame as a poet rests more on what he could have done than on what he did, so do his poems owe their charm more to their suggestiveness than to any tangible [page 1151:] or visible form of beauty they express. “Kubla Khan” — a poem not strictly within the bounds of lyrical poetry, though lyrical in form — is the crowning example of what I have named the suggestive method, because, though many poems have succeeded for the space of two or three lines in evoking the fugitive glamour of dreams, yet this poem throughout its entire length sustains an atmosphere of mystic and elusive loveliness. Keats is never so fine as when he is merely suggestive. Not to mention the oft-quoted lines from “The Nightingale,” he has left no verses of more haunting and melancholy music than “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” And Shakespeare — who must come into every discussion of poetry, no matter what the point at issue — Shakespeare also is a master of the impersonal lyric, of that style of poetry which is without human aspiration, without desire, or regret, fugitive and elusive as the beauty of a dream. Come unto these yellow sands,” with its fragile and airy delicacy and sweetness, is in a different way of excellence from Ye banks and braes,” or “Had we never lov’d sae kindly,” and makes its appeal to the imagination. For though no poet can afford to sacrifice his humanity to his art, yet sometimes it is allowed him to wrap himself in the mantle of his dreams, and speak to us from far untrodden lands whither we cannot follow. And the personal and impersonal lyric have this in common: both should suggest more than they express, for the lyric which leaves the sweetest and saddest word unsaid and the deepest thought unspoken, and yet by the magic of its art insinuates that word or thought into our hearts and minds, is a jewel of rarer and finer quality than the poem which leaves nothing to the imagination.

I have said nothing about metre, because metre is the least concern of a great poet, and because I endeavoured to show in a former paper that simplicity of metre and expression is almost the uniform rule of our finest lyrics. And it is not, as Poe would have us believe, a word or a metre that suggests the thought, but the thought that suggests the metre and appropriate expression. Because, when a perfect thought arises in the brain of genius, it comes ready dressed in all its singing robes.

But enough has been said to show the difficulties that beset the path of him who would write a perfect lyric, indeed to formulate a doubt as to whether the perfect lyric has yet been written.

R. G. T. COVENTRY.