Lyricism in Anglo-Saxon poetry. modern sense, but various short pieces, mostly in the elegiac manner, approach the lyric in form, and are of interest for what they reveal of the fundamental subjective and poetic temper of the Saxon mind. In the poem called Deor's Lament, the compelling impulse of the lyric mood breaks through the restraint of the common alliterative measure in which almost all Old English poetry is written and forces the lines into a rude strophic movement: Das ofereode, Ɖisses swa maeg— That was overpassed; and so this I may endure the poet sings as the burden of his lament at the conclusion of each irregular stanza, in a mood like the mood of that man of many wiles, the muchenduring Odysseus, when he cries out: "Endure, my heart, for already a worse thing than this hast thou endured!" This fragment, however, as well as a few others, may be relics of an earlier poetry no longer extant, wherein greater variety of lyric measure prevailed. Other Anglo-Saxon poems, The Wanderer, The Ruin, The Seafarer, The Wife's Complaint, and The Husband's Message, in the elegiac manner, are fundamentally lyrical, and foreshadow much that is permanent in the lyrical moods of the English poetic genius.1 They may be compared with some of the passages of an elegiac or lyrical cast in the Beowulf, as, for example, the valedictory lament of the last owner of the hoard, over the hidden treasure of the departed 1 Versions of considerable portions of these poems may be found in Stopford Brooke's History of Early English Literature. warriors (lines 2247-2266). The Battle of Brunanburgh1 and the fragment entitled The Fight at Finnsburgh,2 may fairly be classed as lyrical ballads. In The Song of Azarias3 of the Exeter The Anglo-Saxon MS., we have a lyric in everything Religious Lyric. except metrical form. It is a nature-song of praise and thanksgiving addressed to the Creator of this universe of wonders: De gebletsige, bylywit Faeder, Woruldcraefta wlite, and weorca gehwilc To Thee, O Father, blest and merciful, To Thee the heavens and the seas beneath, Among the stars, together render praise! -so the hymn begins (in the longer version quoted in the Caedmonic poem of Daniel), revolving in an artless maze of fervent and earnest repetition around this simple theme to the end. Another Another poem shows this tendency to the lyrical mood and manner in a still more marked degree. This is the Christ, ascribed to Cynewulf. It is a typical early mediæval poem, founded in parts on the model of the Christian Latin poetry, and may be described as a sort of elaborate hymn on a narrative and didactic groundwork.5 The eager aspiration for poetic and above all for 1 Everyone is familiar with Tennyson's version of this poem. 2 A version may be consulted in Garnett's Translation of Beowulf, p. 97. 3 A paraphrase of the Apocryphal book of The Song of the Three Children. Accessible in an admirable edition with modern version by Mr. I. Gollancz (London, 1892). 5 Recent authorities argue that the Christ is properly to be regarded as three separate poems, of which the last doubtless is not by Cynewulf. Cf. Profs. Trautmann and Blackburn in Anglia, vols. xviii. and xix., 1896. (M 349) C lyric utterance is apparent throughout the AngloSaxon period, without articulate and adequate artistic form for such utterance.1 Potentiality of mood, however, and the ideality of temperament requisite for a great national school of poetry are plainly in the race, and it will require but the slight alloy and fusion of foreign blood and culture to bring them to utterance at a later day. Middle English the chief kinds. After the Norman conquest the influence of mediæval asceticism and of the Latin poetry of the church is still apparent in the Middle Lyrical Poetry: English religious lyric. Under French influence, however, a new lyric kind gradually develops, and, under the poetic impulse of Troubadour and Trouvère, a new range of feelings and motives is introduced into English poetry. The lyric production of this period in England was undoubtedly very considerable, although the greater part of it has disappeared. What is left falls into three principal classes: the religious lyric, produced under strict Latin and ecclesiastical influence; the political songs, best exemplified in the poems of Laurence Minot,2 which are racy and original enough in matter and manner, but which are rather satirical than lyrical in spirit; and the secular and amatory lyrics, produced under French and courtly 1 In the Gnomic Verses occurs the following passage (Brooke, History of Early English Literature, p. 10): "To all men wise words are becoming; songs to the gleemen and wisdom to men. As many as men are on the earth, so many are their thoughts; each to himself has a separate soul. So then he who knows many songs and can greet the harp with his hands, hath the less of vain longing, for he hath in himself his gift of joy which God gave to him." 2 Edited by Mr. Joseph Hall (Clarendon Press Series, 1887). influence often, however, composed by wandering students and minstrels,-among which are to be classed a considerable number of miscellaneous lyrics, mainly adespota of unnamed authors, as well as the more formal poetry in lyrical measures, but with meagre lyrical inspiration, of Chaucer and his English followers.1 All these kinds receive their chief development in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when finally the new nation comes into a heritage of language and culture adequate to such uses. The spirit of the Middle English religious lyrics is still that of Christian asceticism, inspired and solaced by a piety fervent and intense if The Middle Eng also narrow and conventionalized. The lish Religious Lyric. greater number are hymns to Christ and to the Virgin. Occasionally there is abundant lyric sweetness and a persuasive grace of movement, revealing the influence of Latin hymnody, as in the following stanza, slightly modernized, from The Virgin's Complaint, a poem of the fifteenth century: I abode and abide with great longing, I love and look when man will crave, I plain me for pity of pining; Would he ask mercy, he should it have; See to me, soul, I shall thee save; Bid me, child, and I will go; Prayedst me never, but I forgave,— Quia amore langueo. 1 There is as yet no convenient anthology of Middle English Lyrics. Consequently they must be sought for generally in the volumes of the Early English Text Society and in similar publications. Boeddeker's edition of MS. Harl. 2253 (Berlin, 1878), however, contains many of the best of the miscellaneous lyrics. A few in modern versions may be found in Fitzgibbon's Early English Poetry (Canterbury Poets), and in Dr. Mac Donald's England's Antiphon. Significant of the mood of these religious lyrics is the fact that frequently an autumnal or winter background is chosen. The conventional background of the new love-poetry, on the other hand, is always spring or summer, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! for the new lyric had its birth in Provence, and still favours its southern ancestry. The union of incipient dramatic conception with affecting pathos and religious fervour is exemplified in the poem entitled, after its first line, Stond wel, moder, under rode -an English variation on the theme of the Stabat Mater Dolorosa: 'Stand well, mother, under the rood; When he rose then fell her sorrow; Lady, for that ilkë bliss, Beseech thy son of sunnës liss Be thou our shield against our foe!1 then for sin's release The English mystery plays perhaps should be classed as crude dramatic lyrics. The form of them throughout is generally stanzaic, and they often 1 The version in its entirety, in Dr. Mac Donald's England's Antiphon, together with the accompanying comments, may be profitably consulted by the reader. |