" 'Lyrical,' it may be said, implies a form of musical utterance
in words governed by overmastering emotion and set free by
a powerfully concordant rhythm."

ERNEST RHYS, Lyric Poetry

THAT "confusion of the genres" which char-
acterizes so much of contemporary art has not
obliterated the ancient division of Poetry into
three chief types, namely, lyric, epic and
dramatic. We still mean by these words very
much what the Greeks meant: a "lyric" is
something sung, an "epic" tells a story, a
"drama" sets characters in action. Corre-
sponding to these general purposes of the three
kinds of Poetry, is the difference which Watts-
Dunton has discussed so suggestively: namely,
that in the lyric the author reveals himself
fully, while in the "epic" or narrative Poem
the author himself is but partly revealed, and
in the drama the author is hidden behind his
characters. Or, putting this difference in
another way, the same critic points out that
the true dramatists possess "absolute" vision,
i.e. unconditioned by the personal impulses of

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