The Form and the Spirit 277or epic, and the question for solution is how far and in what way
the technique of each kind will necessarily be affected or should
with advantage be transformed so as to allow free room for the
steps and the constructive figures of a finer and ampler poetic
idea and a changed soul movement and a just correspondence
to it in the art of the poet.
The lyrical impulse is the original and spontaneous creator
of the poetic form, song the first discovery of the possibility of
a higher because a rhythmic intensity of self-expression. It wells
out from the intensity of touch and the spiritualised emotion
of a more delicate or a deeper and more penetrating sight and
feeling in the experience, captures and sustains the inevitable
cadences of its joy or its attraction, sets the subtle measure of its
feeling and keeps it by the magic of its steps in sound vibrating
on the inner strings and psychic fibres. The lyric is a moment
of heightened soul experience, sometimes brief in a lightness of
aerial rapture, in a poignant ecstasy of pain, of joy or of mingled
emotion or in a swift graver exaltation, sometimes prolonged
and repeating or varying the same note, sometimes linking itself
in a sustained succession to other moments that start from it
or are suggested by its central motive. It is at first a music of
simple melodies coming out of itself to which the spirit listens
with pleasure and makes eternal by it the charm of self-discovery
or of reminiscence. And the lyrical spirit may rest satisfied with
these clear spontaneities of song or else it may prefer to weight
its steps with thought and turn to a meditative movement or,
great-winged, assume an epic elevation, or lyricise the succes-
sive moments of an action, or utter the responses of heart to
heart, mind to mind, soul to soul, move between suggestions and
counter-suggestions of mood and idea and feeling and devise a
lyrical seed or concentration of drama. The widest in range as it
is the most flexible in form and motive of all the poetic kinds, the
others have grown out of it by the assumption of a more settled
and deliberate and extended speech and a more ample structure.
It is therefore in the lyric nearest to the freshness of an original
impulse that a new spirit in poetry is likely to become aware of
itself and feel out for its right ways of expression and to discover