In
examining these characteristics nothing will be attempted in the way of a
history or an inclusive consideration of particular forms which are known
as lyric, but only, as far as may be, an analysis of their governing
principles.
To say that a lyric (using the word henceforward in its particular sense)
is generally short is but to say that poetic tension can only be sustained
for a short time. Poe's saying that a long poem is a sequence of short
ones is perfectly just. What happens, I think, is this. The poetic mood,
selecting a subject, records its perception of that subject, the result is
a lyric, and the mood passes. On its recurrence another subject is selected
and the process repeated. But if another energy than the purely poetic, the
energy of co-ordination of which I have spoken, comes into operation, there
will be a desire in the poet to link the records of his recurrent poetic
perceptions together, and so to construct many poems into a connected
whole. Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or
narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed
into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them.
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