As the basis of our general classification of the varied national and more personal lyric compositions, as in the case of epic poetry, we cannot do better than follow the order of those radical types under which artistic creation generally is unfolded, and which we now know as symbolic, classic, and romantic art. As the main division, therefore, of our present subject-matter, we may, in other words, adopt a similar sequence from Oriental compositions to the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans, and then from this to the Slavonic, Romance, and German peoples.
(a) Taking, then, the Oriental lyric first, we may observe that it differs essentially from the lyrical composition of the West through its inability to attach to it the independent personality and free spirit of the poet, or that unity which characterizes every content of romantic art, its essential infinity, reflecting, in fact, the potential depth of the romantic soul. Such a distinction is only in keeping with the universal principle of the East. The individual conscious life is here, referably to its content, directly absorbed in the detail of external fact, expressing itself under the condition and specific relations of this inseparable unity. And, from a further point of view, it asserts itself, without being able to secure a firm ground of stability in itself, as opposed to what it conceives to be of potency and substance in Nature and the conditions of human existence, which it wrestles to reach whether through emotion or imagination, at one time situated towards it rather in the relation of pure opposition, at another with more freedom, but in either case with ultimate failure. What we find here, therefore, if we confine our attention to form, is not so much the poetic expression of independent ideas over objects or their connections, as it is the bare mirror of this unreflecting absorption,[17] wherein the individual consciousness does not disclose itself in its own self-concentration as free personality,[18] but rather in its self-annulment[19] before the external object or condition. Thus regarded, the Oriental lyric frequently, particularly in its contrast to the romantic, assumes a more objective tone. Here we shall often enough find that the poet does not so much express facts and conditions as they affect him, but rather as they are in themselves, a disclosure which frequently bestows on them an independent soul of vitality of their own. For illustration we may take that exclamation of Hafis:
"Come, O come! The nightingale passeth from the soul of Hafis once again over the scent of the roses of delight."
Regarded in another light, the tendency of this lyrical poetry, by freeing the poet from the limitations of his private individuality, is to replace this with a kind of primitive expansion of soul, which, however, very easily loses itself in mere boundlessness, or is merged in a deliberate effort to express that which it accepts as object but cannot fully penetrate, because this content is itself the formless substance. For this reason, speaking generally, the lyric of the East, more especially among the Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians, possesses the character of hymns of exaltation. With spendthrift prodigality all greatness, might, and glory are lavished upon the creature, in order to make all such transitory splendour vanish before the unspeakable majesty of God; or, at least, it never is tired of stringing together in some precious chain everything that is lovable or fair, in order to present the same as a thankoffering to the object, be it Sultan, the beloved, or the wine-shop, which the poet has set himself above all things to celebrate.
In conclusion, if we look more closely at form of expression in this type of poetry, we shall find that it is mainly the metaphor, the image, and the simile which are favoured. For, in the first place, on account of the fact that he is not himself wholly free to express his own personal life, the poet can only disclose himself in something else, something external to himself, with the aid of life that can compare with himself. And also we may observe that what is here universal and substantive remains abstract; that is to say, it is unable to merge itself in the definite form of a free individuality, so that now, even on its own account, it is only in comparisons with the varied phenomena of the world that it is able to envisage itself; and we may add that both these cases, in the last instance, only possess the worth of being able to assist some comparable approach to that One which alone possesses significance, and is worthy of honour and praise. These metaphors, images, and similes, however, in which the individual soul, as it asserts itself, is exclusively identified almost to the point of visibility, are not the actual feeling and spiritual state itself, but rather a mode of expression which is wholly personal and of the poet's composition. What, therefore, the lyrical artist here loses in the concreteness of his spiritual freedom, this we find is replaced by the freedom of his expression, which moves forward through all the most manifold phases; that is, from the naïve simplicity of its images and similes to every conceivable audacity and the acutest ingenuity of novel and surprising combinations. As regards particular nations in which we find this Oriental type of lyric represented, we may mention, first, the Chinese; secondly, the Hindoos; thirdly, and to a pre-eminent degree, the Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians. I cannot, however, enter into any closer description of these.
(b) In the case of the second principal division of our present poetic type, that is in the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans, it is the principle of classic individuality which, above all, distinguishes its character. In accordance with this principle, the artistic consciousness, which seeks for lyrical expression, neither loses itself in the facts of the natural world, nor exalts itself over itself to the height of that Sublime outcry to all creation: "Let all that hath breath praise the Lord!" Nor is it absorbed, after divesting itself joyfully from all the bonds of finite existence, in that One Being in which all live and move. Rather the poet here is freely merged in the Universal, regarded as the very substance of his own spirit; and in this personal union within himself attains his self-conscious poetic activity.
And just as the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans is distinct from that of the Orientals, so too, from another point of view, it differs from the romantic. In other words, instead of unveiling its depths in the intimacy of particular moods and states of feeling, it rather elaborates, to the point of the most explicit definition, this inward life of its individual passion and meditation. And by doing so it even retains, even as the expression of this inward spirit, so far as this is permitted to the Lyric, the plastic type of classic art. All that it communicates, in short, of the views and maxims of life and wisdom, despite all the penetration of its general principle, nevertheless does not dispense with the free individuality of independent thought and conception. It expresses itself less in the wealth of image and metaphor, than directly and categorically. At the same time, also, the personal feeling, at one time in more general relations, at another in the form of vision itself, is on its own account objective. In the same mode of individuality the particular types may be classified as distinct from each other in conception, expression, phraseology, and verse-measure, until they reach the culminating point of their independent elaboration. And as we have found it true of the soul itself and its ideas, so, too, the external presentment is of more plastic type. In other words, from a musical point or view, it emphasizes less the ideal soul-melody of emotion than the sensuous verbal quantity in the rhythmical measure of its movement, to which it may further attach the complex mazes of the dance.
(α) With the richest originality this artistic form of Greek lyric poetry is perfected. In the first instance we may trace it in those hymns possessing a content as yet more akin to the epic mode, which do not so much express in their epic metre a personal enthusiasm as they set before us a plastic image of gods in deliberately objective outlines. The next step, so far as metre is concerned, we mark in the elegiac syllabic measure, which associates the pentameter with the hexameter, which, in the regular recurrence of its ending after the hexameter, and with its two equally divided sections, opens the way to the complete singularity of the verse strophe. The elegy is also throughout in its tone of the lyric type. This is so in the case of the political elegy no less than the erotic, although, particularly as gnomic elegy, it still closely approaches the epic insistence upon and expression of the substantive as such, and for this reason almost exclusively belongs to the Ionians, with whom the objective point of view was generally predominant. In respect also to its musical side, it is primarily the aspect of rhythm which is here successfully worked out. And, on parallel lines with it, we may observe, thirdly, the development of the Iambic poem in a novel verse-measure. This, however, is, by reason of the keenness of its invectives, from the first of a more subjective or personal tendency. The genuine mode of lyrical reflection and passion, however, receives for the first time its full development in the so-called Melisian[20] lyric. The metres are more varied, more capable of change; the strophes are more rich; the suggestions of musical accompaniment are more complete in virtue of the nature of the accepted modulation. Each poet creates a syllabic measure which corresponds with his or her lyrical nature. Thus Sappho adapts one to a type of composition which is sensuous, inspired with the glow of passion and expressed with an effect which works up to a supreme crisis. Alcaeus moulds one in harmony with his masculine and bolder odes. To an exceptional degree, too, the Scoliasts supply many indications of the finer nuances of diction and metre by reason of the variety of their content and melodic utterance.