the use of that one word, Egypt, should answer for ever the people who
think that the subject-matter of poetry is to be expressed by rhythm.

Thus we have rhythm expressing the poetic emotion, or intensity of
perception, and words expressing the thing that is intensely perceived; so,
as the creed of the mystics shows us beauty born of the exact fusion of
thought with feeling, of perfect correspondence of the strictly chosen
words to the rhythmic movement is born the complete form of poetry.
And when this perfect correspondence occurs unaccompanied by any other
energy--save, perhaps, the co-ordinating energy of which I have spoken--we
have pure poetry and what is commonly in our minds when we think of lyric.
If it be objected that some of my illustrations, that speech of Caliban's
for example, are taken from "dramatic poetry" and not from "lyric poetry,"
my answer is that it is impossible to discover any essential difference
between those lines and any authentic poem that is known as "a lyric." The
kind of difference that there is can be found also between any two
lyrics; it is accidental, resulting from difference of personality and
subject-matter, and the essential poetic intensity, which is the thing that
concerns us, is of the same nature in both cases. 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.