The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase LESSON 82. WRITTEN DISCOURSE-POETRY, KINDS OF. I. Didactic Poetry. - Didactic poetry is that which aims to teach. But to call that which directly aims to teach, poetry, is to be guilty of a misnomer. In so far as poetry aims directly at instruction, it usurps, as has been said, the function of prose. Prose is free from all the artifices and all the restraints of poetry-rhythm, meter, rhyme — those peculiarities of poetry which solicit our thoughts from the subject-matter, and fix them attentively upon the expression of it. That poetry, then, which essays to teach, "defeats its strong intent," the charm and fascination of the form withdrawing us from the instruction conveyed; the instruction, if attended to, luring us away from the beauty of the expression. Still, there is that which we must name didactic poetry. We are compelled to call that poetry which is poetic in form, even if not eminently so in spirit. II. Satirical Poetry. - Satirical poetry is that which deals with the vices and follies of men. Its aim is destructive, its spirit often malevolent; there is little of sweetness in it, the feelings which engender it and those to which it ministers are not the most healthful and humane. When the relations of poets to poets and to critics were less courteous than now, poetry of this kind, in poems of great length, abounded. But since Addison's day, when English prose first overtook poetry and commenced running abreast with it, satire and instruction have sought expression through prose; and both satirical and didactic poetry have lost favor; they are not now cultivated as they were. The great satires of Dryden and of Pope did much, Thackeray thinks, to bring the profession of literature into contempt. III. Lyric Poetry. - Lyric poetry is that which is written to be sung. The range of its topics is wide, but the range of feelings which inspire it and which it inspires is narrow; within this realm, however, its reign is supreme. Lyric poetry may be divided into sacred and secular. Hymns and psalms, expressing our feelings towards God, constitute the one; songs relating to battle, to patriotism, to party, to sociality, and odes, elegies, and sonnets form the bulk of the other. The ode, a poem longer than an ordinary song and full of lofty passion; the elegy, also a long poem whose burden is regret for the dead; and the sonnet, a poem of fourteen lines, cannot always be called lyric now, if we rigidly restrict lyric to poetry which is sung. Prof. Hadley says, "The poetry of our day has been almost exclusively lyrical; our poets have, to a singular extent, been song-writers." And he accounts for this by adding, "Moving hotly and hurriedly in the career of politics, or swallowed up in business, or prosecuting science with a zeal never before paralleled, we have found no time for lengthened poems. The influence of lyric poetry is well expressed in that oft-quoted sentence of Sir Andrew Fletcher's, "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who should make its laws." For out of the very songs that we sing there steals an influence that enters into us, and does much to direct our conduct and shape our character, almost rendering needless the powerful restraints of law. IV. Pastoral Poetry. -Pastoral poetry is that which deals with the objects of external nature. It finds its topics in the greenness and freshness of verdure, in the life and growth of spring; in the sunrise and the sunset, the sunshine and the rain of summer; the yellow harvests, the rich coloring of the woods, the dreamy Indian summer days, and the gradual decadence of nature's growths in autumn; and in the winds, the falling snow, the bracing out-door sports of winter. Flower and leaf and bird and insect, the scenery of mountain and valley and rivers and lakes and clouds, rural life in all its changes, nature in all her moods these not as matter for mere description or for science, but as objects of beauty-these, seen by the eye of a Bryant, or by the keener eye of a Wordsworth these are the subjects of pastoral poetry. No poetry is better understood or appreciated, and none is more popular. Poems of this kind, short and endlessly varied in subject and in form, abound, and constitute a most entertaining and valuable part of poetic literature. V. Epic Poetry. -Epic poetry is that which deals with the life and adventures of some real or mythic personage, called a hero. An epic poem is usually long-too long to be read at a single sitting. Intense feeling, such as poetry arouses, is in its nature exhausting, and in duration is, and must be, brief. "Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die." The opinion of Poe that such a compo sition as "Paradise Lost" is not so truly a poem as a series of poems, seems to be gaining acceptance. Such sustained efforts are now rare in English, though not wholly of the past. We must take this statement of Hadley's, made in 1849, with some grains of allowance: "As for great constructive poems, vast systems of narrative, meditation, and description, built up in the deeps of an ideal world, they have well-nigh disappeared. In America, where the influences that oppose their construction are the strongest, we have nothing of the kind. The occasional attempts which we have seen in epic and dramatic composition have been generally unsuccessful. Yet this has been almost equally the case in England." An epic poem affords room for a vast variety of topics and of treatment, and demands of the poet a higher grade and a wider range of powers than are common. A great epic is the work of genius toiling it may be for years. It "does not need repeat," but insures at once the author's immortality. The heroic measure, the pentameter, the iambic of ten syllables, is the meter generally used in the English epic. A few great epics can be found in our inheritance of English literature. The romance, of which we have examples in Scott's "Marmion" and his "Lady of the Lake," is a subdivision of the epic. So also is the tale, a story in which love may be the motive as in "Enoch Arden." Still another subdivision of the epic is the ballad a short and simple poem full of incident, serious or humorous, and moving rapidly to its conclusion. "Chevy Chase" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" illustrate this species of the epic. VI. Dramatic Poetry. — Dramatic poetry is poetry written to be acted. Dramatic poetry exists in the form called plays. These are written in a style that fits them for stage representation. There is in them little that is commonplace; everything is positive and pronounced; the passion is strong, often tumultuous, the thought is vigorous, the incidents exciting. The divisions of dramatic poetry commonly made are comedy and tragedy. Comedy is light and humorous, abounding in ludicrous action and incident. There is often a dash of satire in the wit, but its main purpose is to amuse. Tragedy is earnest and serious, deals often with great men and lofty actions with those actions which lead to calamitous and even fatal issues. But comedy and tragedy are found side by side in some of the greatest dramas, as they are in real life. The human element is the prevailing one in dramatic poetry. Such poetry brings people of all grades of station, culture, and character upon the stage, there to act and talk as real men in their circumstances would do. It is by what they do and say, and by this alone, that they exhibit what manner of men and women they are. The great work of the dramatist is impersonation- the embodiment and the revelation of character. This kind of poetry is in verse what fiction is in prose; indeed, plays not written in verse belong to that division of prose called fiction. History furnishes a favorite field for the dramatist. The real personages of the past or of the present, as the poet conceives them, are placed upon the stage before us, and are made to live over again some portion of their lives. In doing this and in uttering what the dramatist puts into their mouths, they stand out in the play more distinct, and often truer to life, than they do on the pages of history. Mark Antony, Julius Cæsar, Coriolanus, and Cleopatra are better revealed in the dramas of Shakespeare than they are in "Plutarch's Lives." But the triumphs of dramatic art are better seen perhaps |