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. The
musician--if he be a good one--finds his own perception prompted by the
poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from
the terms of poetry into the terms of music. The result may be, and often
is, of rare beauty and of an artistic significance as great, perhaps, as
that of the poem itself, and the poet is mistaken in refusing, as he often
does,[4] to be the cause of the liberation of this new and admirable
activity in others. But, in the hands of the musician, once a poem has
served this purpose, it has, as poetry, no further existence. It is
well that the musician should use fine poetry and not bad verse as his
inspiration, for obvious reasons, but when the poetry has so quickened him
it is of no further importance in his art save as a means of exercising a
beautiful instrument, the human voice. It is unnecessary to discuss the
relative functions of two great arts, wholly different in their methods,
different in their scope. But it is futile to attempt to blend the two.

[4: His refusal is commonly due to lamentable experience. If a
Shelley is willing to lend his suggestions to the musician, he has some
right to demand that the musician shall be a Wolf. The condition of his