allowing his poem to be used and destroyed in the process is, rightly, that
something of equal nobility shall be wrought of its dust.]

As far as my indifferent understanding of the musician's art will allow me
I delight in and reverence it, and the singing human voice seems to me to
be, perhaps, the most exquisite instrument that the musician can command.
But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with
the use of words in poetry. If the song be good, I do not care whether the
words are German, which I cannot understand, or English, which I can. On
the whole I think I prefer not to understand them, since I am then not
distracted by thoughts of another art.

If then from the argument about the lyric that it should "sing," we dismiss
this particular meaning of its adaptability to music, what have we left? It
cannot be that it peculiarly should be rhythmic, since we have seen that to
be this is of the essential nature of all poetry--that rhythm is, indeed,
necessary to the expression of the poetic emotion itself. It cannot be that
it peculiarly should be of passionate intensity, since again, this we have
seen to be the condition of all poetry. In short, it can mean nothing that
cannot with equal justice be said of poetry wherever it may be found. To
the ear that is worthy of poetry the majestic verse of the great passages
in _Paradise Lost_, the fierce passion of Antony and Macbeth, the
movement of the poetry in _Sigurd the Volsung_, "sing" as surely as
the lyrics of the Elizabethans or of _Poems and Ballads_. Poetry must
give of its essential qualities at all times, and we cannot justly demand
that at any time it should give us more than these.



THE POPULARITY OF LYRIC