384 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



It is not precisely in poignancy or depth or gravity of 

 thought that the Victorian differ from the Elizabethan lyrists. 

 What can be more poignant than : 



Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 

 Thou dost not bite so nigh 



As benefits forgot : 

 Though thou the waters warp, 

 Thy sting is not so sharp 



As friend remembered not. 



What can be deeper than : 



Of what is't fools make such vain keeping ? 

 Sin their conception, their birth weeping ; 

 Their life a general mist of error, 

 Their death a hideous storm of terror. 



What can be graver than : 



The glories of our birth and state 

 Are shadows, not substantial things ; 



There is no armour against fate, 

 Death lays his icy hand on kings. 



For pure poignancy, profundity, and weight, Elizabethan 

 lyrics will compare not unfavourably with Victorian. The 

 difference does not consist in the ore worked by the lyrists, 

 but in their way of handling it. In this latter age a poet 

 allows himself far wider scope of treatment when he writes 

 a song. He does not think of the music of voice or viol, but 

 of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of 

 the soul. The result is a wealthier and fuller symphony, 

 reaching the imaginative sense not upon the path of musical 

 sound, but appealing to the mental ear and also to that 

 ' inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.' The Victorian 

 lyric, superior in its range, suggestiveness, variety, and 

 richness, inferior in its spontaneity and birdlike intonation, 

 corresponds to the highly-strung and panharmonic instrument 

 of the poet's spirit which produced it, and to the manifold 

 sympathies of the reader's mind for which it was intended. 

 It is iridescent with the intermingled hues of fancy, con- 

 templation, gnomic wisdom, personal passion, discursive 



