I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note
which accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed
in `Poetry'. He said:
"Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, `What are we going to do
to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by
`the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume
on `The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition
of the lyric: `With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term.
It included the crooning of the nurse to the child . . .
the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor . . . the formal ode
sung by the poet. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes,
music was the handmaid of verse. . . . The poet himself
composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because
Iophon had assisted him in the musical setting of some of his dramas.'
Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in American vaudeville,
where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung,
the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon
the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer.
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