Any general term that can
fitly be applied to, say, the _Ode to The West Wind_ can be applied
with equal fitness to Caliban's island lore. Both are poetry, springing
from the same imaginative activity, living through the same perfect
selection and ordering of words, and, in our response, quickening the same
ecstasy. Although we are accustomed to look rather for the rhymed and
stanzaic movement of the former in a lyric than for the stricter economy
and uniformity of Caliban's blank verse, yet both have the essential
qualities of lyric--of pure poetry.
SONG
It may be protested that after all the peculiar property of lyric,
differentiating it from other kinds of poetry, is that it is song. If we
dismiss the association of the art of poetry with the art of music, as
we may well do, I think the protest is left without any significance. In
English, at any rate, there is hardly any verse--a few Elizabethan poems
only--written expressly to be sung and not to be spoken, that has any
importance as poetry, and even the exceptions have their poetic value quite
independently of their musical setting. For the rest, whenever a true poem
is given a musical setting, the strictly poetic quality is destroyed.
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