LYRIC POETRY (Lat. lyricus, from Gk. Xupacos, lyrikos, relating to the lyre, from XI:pa, lyra. lyre). A name given by the Creeks to a kind of poetry chanted or sung to the accom paniment of a lyre. Though the lyric element is often apparent in epic, dramatic, didactic, or other literary forms, it is distinguishable from them. The lyric utters in the main only what is felt by the soul. It is a cry of the heart, sometimes joyful, but more often sad. In lyric poetry, description. narrative, psychic analysis, and drama have little or no place, for lyric poetry is emotional above all things. Therefore no true lyric can be of great length, for an emotion is soon spent or changed after a pause for recovery to an emotion of another kind.
The more objective and impersonal poetry is, the weaker does the lyric element become. Ou the other hand, despite strong personality. or seeming eccentricity, a lyric poet in uttering his individual emotions can hardly help expressing what is felt by other men, and thus the tempera ment of a race, its fears, regrets, yearnings, its sudden anger, its griefs and hopes, may find their outlet in lyric song. Though so complex and per sonal a thing is necessarily indefinable, we may think of the lyric as a musical expression of emo tions by language. If meant to be heard with music the lyric necessarily follows a beat or measure answering more or less to those of the instrument to whose music it is sung. Thus in antiquity lyric song was adapted to the lyre or harp. Medizeral singers used other instruments, such as the rebeck, viol, bagpipe, and lute. The lute was a favorite instrument in Shakespeare's time. The very barbers kept lutes in .order that a waiting customer might while away his time with a lyric song. How much more lyric than we the Elizabethans were, is likewise proved by the fact that in playing Shakespeare we now adays are robbed of the lyric passages, which managers cut out on the ground that they clog or delay the plot. By Elizabethan audiences the lyrics were relished like the other elements.
Lyric poetry has usually been strongest and best among those races and at those times wherein individuality has manifested itself most potently. Thus it burst out in Greece when the monarchies were yielding to oligarchy and democracy. From the eighth century B.C. to the middle of the fifth a throng of poets were singing in Asia !Mino•, on the Greek mainland, and amid the isles of the Ionian Sea. CaIlinus of Ephesus, the creator of the Greek political elegy; Tyrt:pus. maker of those elegies which inspired the Spartans as they marched to battle; Minmermus, composer of erotic elegies, with Solon, Theognis. and Phocy lides; Archilochus. Hipponax, and Sinmnides of Amorgos in the iambic; Anacreon, Aleams, and Sappho in the love song: and finally Pindar and others in choral poetry, are all representatives of the Greek lyric.
In Italy, Horace. Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid put their personal emotions into verse, hut lyric poetry never throve among the Romans. whose individuality was hampered by the State. nor were they a highly emotional people. Nevertheless the Roman soldiery sang satirical verses as they followed the triumphal chariot of a conqueror: the Romans have left as also a few bits in rhythmic septenarius verse, and their popular songs were probably imitated hi the Latin hymns of the Church. For centuries lyric poetry seems to have been kept alive by the lower classes. About 1050 it began to bloom in Provence. whence it spread to Northern France. Sicily, then to Umbria and Tuscany. Or, perhaps it were better to say that it began spon taneously to flourish in these regions, although it was influenced in its grow th by the poetry of the Troubadours. In Umbria Jacopone uttered the emotions of a religious upheaval; in Tuscany Lap() I ;Mimi, Guido Cavalcanti, vino da Fistula, and Dante and Tetrarch began to sing.
In Northern France Adam de la Halle, Gau tier de Coincy, Colin Music Conon de Wthune, and other; composed lyric poems. but Francois I Mon (q.v.) was the first Frenchman to put himself, soul and laxly, into poesy. The lyrico
epic songs, called in the Middle Ages chansons d'histoi•e or chansons do toile, with motets, ro tvonenges, rondenu•. bent Itcs, were well-known northern forms. The sc Tr( ntois was also Provencal. The chonson properly so called came from the south with the saint (rumou•, the triv•on. and the jcti,c pe•tis. After languishing for three hundred years. French lyric poetry began to revive in the prose of Rousseau and reached its height in Victor The French •omblin, t•iolet, and Ital. villanelle) are well known from such English imitations as Austin Dobson's. English poetry before the Norman Conquest was largely narrative, though it was oftu n lyrical in the depth of its emotion. Thor's Complaint is the earliest lyric known in Anglo-Saxon. Purely lyric poems appeared in the fourteenth century. a century after Walther von der patriotic songs and love poems had charmed Germany. To the fourteenth century belong several pretty love poems, beautiful hymns to the gin. ballades, rondels, virclays, and a series of political songs by Laurence Minot cele brating the exploits of Edward Ill. In Eliz abethan days the lyric assumed the form of the song, the pastoral, the madrigal, and the sonnet. These spontaneous lyrics were succeeded by the love songs of the Cavaliers and the classic lyrics of :Milton. After -Milton lyric poetry in England was choked by the critics, who were swayed by French influence. France had scarcely had any lyric poetry since the 1%imle and Maturia de Regnier. Then came Gray. Collins, Chattertom and the more spontaneous Burns. Throughout the nineteenth century English poetry was mainly lyrical in temper and much of it was so in form. We arc still and perhaps we shall al ways be in doubt as to how lyric poetry arose and where. hut the documents of literature allow us to follow the development of lyric poetry from long' before Christ to now. Never had the lyric wider sway than in the nineteenth century. True. mueh, indeed most, of the lyrics of Goethe and of Heine. of Lamartine and Hugo. of Wordsworth. Keats. Shelley. and Byron, and later of Tennyson, Browning. and Swinbu•ne. are not songs and were never meant to he on the other hand. they hold the emotions of an immensely complex world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. duller and Donaldson. llistory Bibliography. duller and Donaldson. llistory of the Literature of Ancient Greece (trans. Lon don. IS'50-5S) : Sellar. The Roman Poi Is of lb' Augustan Age (Oxford. 1?921 : Du Pastes populnire.c Int in, 1711 all Tlltrnr sil'ele (Paris. .Teanroy. Oriainex de la ple'Sie tartan(' en France ( Pa ris. ; G. Paris. La 11Wrature foriirmisc en mourn dry' (Paris. I R901 : id., rraneois Villon (Park, 1901) ; Orth. • Point anal S'Irophenhan del eltfranziisisrInn Luri• (Cassel. IfS'.421 : Brune t ere, de la paSie turbine en France (Paris, 1895) ; Gorra, Odle origin( della pocsiu lirica del audio cru (Turin. 1895) ; Symonds, Wine, Woman, and luny (London, 1684.99), ex cellent translations of the Latin songs of mediieval students with a preface on Uoliardic literature; Werner, Lyriker and Epihcr (Leip zig, 1890) ; Carpenter, Outline Guide to the Ntudy of English Lyric Poetry (Chicago, 1897), which contains a rich bibliography; and, for selections, Palgrave, Golden Treasury of Sonys and Lyrics (1st series, London, 1861, enlarged 1891 ; 2d series, 1897) ; Ward. English. Cantos (4 vols., London, 1880-83). Consult also Can field, French Lyrics, selections from the earliest down to the latest lyric poets (New York, 1899), and Quiller-Coueh, Tin Golden Pomp, English, Lyrics from surrey to Shirley (London, 1902).
LYS, Ms, or LEYE, Ire. A tributary of the ,Scheldt. It rises in France in the Department of Pas-de-Calais, and flows in a northeast direc tion, forming for a part of its course the boun between France and Belgium and joining the Scheldt at after a course of 130 miles (Map: Belgium. B 4). It is canalized for 44 miles from the town of Aire, near its source, to the Belgian frontier. and connects with an ex tensive canal system through which some of its water flows into the North Sea at Ostend.