An appreciation of the lyric mood can be helped greatly by adequate oral reading in the classroom. For teachers who need suggestions as to oral interpretation, Professor Walter Barnes's edition of Palgrave's Golden Treasury (Row, Petersen & Co., Chicago) is to be commended.
The student's ability to analyse a lyric poem should be tested by frequent written exercises. The method of criticism may be worked out by the individual teacher, but I have found it useful to ask students to test a poem by some or all of the following questions:
(a) What kind of experience, thought or emotion furnishes the basis for this lyric? What kind or degree of sensitiveness to the facts of nature? What sort of inner mood or passion? Is the "motive" of this lyric purely personal? If not, what other relationships or associations are involved?
(b) What sort of imaginative transformation of the material furnished by the senses? What kind of imagery? Is it true poetry or only verse?
(c) What degree of technical mastery of lyric structure? Subordination of material to unity of "tone"? What devices of rhythm or sound to heighten the intended effect? Noticeable words or phrases? Does the author's power of artistic expression keep pace with his feeling and imagination?
CHAPTER VIII
For a discussion of narrative verse in general, see Gummere's Poetics and Oldest English Epic, Hart's Epic and Ballad, Council's Study of Poetry, and Matthew Arnold's essay "On Translating Homer."
For the further study of ballads, note G. L. Kittredge's one volume edition of Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Gummere's Popular Ballad, G. H. Stempel's Book of Ballads, J. A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads, and Hart's summary of Child's views in Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass., vol. 21, 1906. The Oxford Book of English Verse, Nos. 367-389, gives excellent specimens.
All handbooks on Poetics discuss the Ode. Gosse's English Odes and
William Sharp's Great Odes are good collections.
For the sonnet, note Corson's chapter in his Primer of English Verse, and the Introduction to Miss Lockwood's collection. There are other well-known collections by Leigh Hunt, Hall Caine and William Sharp. Special articles on the sonnet are noted in Poole's Index.