dramatic poetry, and there is no better general division. The lyric,
which is properly a song, expresses the transient feeling or mood of
the writer, and therefore is never very long. One must be sensitive to
the music of verse to care for a poem of this kind, because it tells no
story. Dryden's _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_ and Gray's _Elegy_, both
included in the present volume, are lyrics. Among the most beautiful
of English lyrics are Milton's _Lycidas_, Wordsworth's _Ode on
Intimations of Immortality_, and Shelley's _To a Skylark_ and
_Adonais_; while of American poems of the same kind none is nobler than
Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_. Short lyrics, among which are songs and
sonnets, can be found in the works of almost every poet of note,
whether English or American. Under the head of epic or narrative
poetry are included long productions like the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_
of Homer and the _Paradise Lost_ of Milton, and shorter poems, such as
Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_ and _Longfellow's _Evangeline_. Indeed,
every piece of verse that tells a story, however short it may be,
belongs with the epics or narratives. Dramatic poetry includes
well-known plays like Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_ and _Julius
Caesar_, and also certain poems not written for the stage, such as
Browning's _Pippa Passes_ and Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_. In a
dramatic production the poet goes out of himself for the time being,
and expresses the thoughts and feelings of other characters.

It may have been noticed that in this description of the principal
kinds of poetry, only three of the poems included in this book have
been mentioned. This is because the other three--_The Traveller_, _The
Deserted Village_, and _The Cotter's Saturday Night_--do not fit
exactly into any of the divisions. One would class them with the epics
rather than with the lyrics or the dramas, but they are not properly
narratives, because they tell no story; they are really descriptive and