WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 383 



extent the best lyrics of the Victorian age are not made to 

 be sung. 



Madame Goldschmidt's remarks were only partially true 

 perhaps. There is no reason, if we possessed a Schubert, 

 why Coleridge's ' Kubla Khan ' should not be set to music ; 

 and Handel could surely have written alternate choruses and 

 solos for a considerable part of Wordsworth's ' Ode to Duty.' 

 Yet the fact remains that Victorian lyrics are not so singable 

 as Elizabethan lyrics ; and the reason is that they are far 

 more complex, not in their verbal structure merely, but 

 in the thoughts, images, emotions which have prompted 

 them. The words carry too many, too various, too con- 

 templative suggestions. Nothing can be lyrically more 

 lovely than : 



Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 

 Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. 



Or than : 



Fair are others : none beholds thee : 



But thy voice sounds low and tender 

 Like the fairest, for it folds thee 



From the sight, that liquid splendour ; 

 And all feel, yet see thee never, 

 As I feel now, lost for ever ! 



Or than : 



Will no one tell me what she sings ? 

 Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

 For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

 And battles long ago ; 

 Or is it some more humble lay, 

 Familiar matters of to-day ? 

 Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 

 That has been, and may be again. 



But Wordsworth in the last of these examples is meditative, 

 reflective, questioning ; his stanza will not suit the directness 

 of musical melody. But the finest phrases in the specimens 

 from Keats and Shelley, charmed magic casements/ ' perilous 

 seas,' 'that liquid splendour,' perplex and impede the 

 movement of song. 



