The Ode is the loftiest form of lyric, and expresses great range and depth of feeling. This range of emotion often varies the metre. Examples: Tennyson’s Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington; Lowell’s Commemoration Ode.
The Elegy laments the fleeting condition of human affairs. Examples: Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Milton’s Lycidas; Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
The Sonnet is a short poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines, and had originally a prescribed arrangement of rhyming lines. The great English sonnet writers are Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Browning.
Many lyrics have none of the special aims already mentioned. These may be called Simple lyrics. Example: Burns’s To a Daisy.
Didactic verse is not the highest type of poetry.
Its aim is not to give pleasure, but to instruct.
Example: Pope’s Essay on Man.
POETICS
Poetry differs from prose in three particulars: in its purpose, in its style, and in its form.
The chief object of poetry is to give pleasure. Of all literature it is the most spontaneous because addressed particularly to the feelings.