lyric

—lyrically, adv. —lyricalness, n.

/lir"ik/, adj. Also, lyrical.

1. (of poetry) having the form and musical quality of a song, and esp. the character of a songlike outpouring of the poet's own thoughts and feelings, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poetry.

2. pertaining to or writing lyric poetry: a lyric poet.

3. characterized by or expressing spontaneous, direct feeling: a lyric song; lyric writing.

4. pertaining to, rendered by, or employing singing.

5. (of a voice) relatively light of volume and modest in range: a lyric soprano.

6. pertaining, adapted, or sung to the lyre, or composing poems to be sung to the lyre: ancient Greek lyric odes.

n.

7. a lyric poem.

8. Often, lyrics. the words of a song.

[1575-85; < L lyricus < Gk lyrikós. See LYRE, -IC]

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Verse or poem that can, or supposedly can, be sung to musical accompaniment (in ancient times, usually a lyre) or that expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song.

Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a story. The elegy, ode, and sonnet are important forms of lyric poetry.

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▪ poetry

      a verse or poem that is, or supposedly is, susceptible of being sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument (in ancient times, usually a lyre) or that expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song. Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a story. Elegies, odes, and sonnets are all important kinds of lyric poetry.

      In ancient Greece an early distinction was made between the poetry chanted by a choir of singers (choral lyrics) and the song that expressed the sentiments of a single poet. The latter, the melos, or song proper, had reached a height of technical perfection in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” as early as the 7th century BC. That poetess, together with her contemporary Alcaeus, were the chief Doric poets of the pure Greek song. By their side, and later, flourished the great poets who set words to music for choirs, Alcman, Arion, Stesichorus, Simonides, and Ibycus, who were followed at the close of the 5th century by Bacchylides and Pindar, in whom the tradition of the dithyrambic odes reached its highest development.

      Latin lyrics were written by Catullus and Horace in the 1st century BC; and in medieval Europe the lyric form can be found in the songs of the troubadours, in Christian hymns, and in various ballads. In the Renaissance the most finished form of lyric, the sonnet, was brilliantly developed by Petrarch, Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton. Especially identified with the lyrical forms of poetry in the late 18th and 19th centuries were the Romantic poets, including such diverse figures as Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Goethe, and Heinrich Heine. With the exception of some dramatic verse, most Western poetry in the late 19th and the 20th century may be classified as lyrical.

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