—Wordsworth.
Into the sunshine,
Full of light,
Leaping and flashing
From morn to night!
—Lowell.
B. Name each verse in the following stanza:—
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight—
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
—Poe.
+117. Kinds of Poetry.+-There are three general classes of poetry: narrative, lyric, and dramatic.
A. Narrative poetry, as may be inferred from its name, relates events which may be either real or imaginary. Its chief varieties are the epic, the metrical romance or lesser epic, the tale, and the ballad.
An epic poem is an extended narrative of an elevated character that deals with heroic exploits which are frequently under supernatural control. This kind of poetry is characterized by the intricacy of plot, by the delineation of noble types of character, by its descriptive effects, by its elevated language, and by its seriousness of tone. The epic is considered as the highest effort of man's poetic genius. It is so difficult to produce an epic that but few literatures contain more than one. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the German Nibelungenlied, the Spanish Cid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Milton's Paradise Lost are important epics found in different literatures.
A metrical romance or lesser epic is a narrative poem, shorter and less dignified than the epic. Longfellow's Evangeline and Scott's Marmion and Lady of the Lake are examples of this kind of poetry.