And in each case we find that the
token of this quality is a conviction that here are words that could not
have been otherwise chosen or otherwise placed; that here is an expression
to rearrange which would be to destroy it--a conviction that we by no means
have about the prose of Fielding and Ruskin, admirable as it is. We find,
in short, that this quality equals a maximum of imaginative pressure
freeing itself in the best words in the best order. And this quality is the
specific poetic quality; the presence or absence of which should decide for
us, without any other consideration whatever, whether what is before us is
or is not poetry. And it seems to me, further, that what we have in our
minds when we speak of lyric is precisely this same quality; that lyric and
the expression of pure poetic energy unrelated to other energies are the
same thing.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY
It is not yet the place to discuss the question of lyric forms--to consider
what kind of thing it is that people mean when they speak of "a lyric."
First we must consider the commonly accepted opinion that a lyric is an
expression of personal emotion, with its implication that there is an
essential difference between a lyric and, say, dramatic or narrative
poetry.
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