Lyrics in English | Glass Darkly

We will read and discuss short poems in English, including many from England and some from Scotland, Ireland, America and other English-speaking places. We will pay attention to the musical qualities of verse and recognize song lyrics as poetry. We will discuss lyrics we know by heart. Students will have a chance to introduce poems or songs that they love or hate. We might, if the spirit moves us, write some lyrics of our own.

AS YOU LIKE IT

William Shakespeare

Act 3, Scene 3

TOUCHSTONE: Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

AUDREY: I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE: No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.

ESSAY ON CRITICISM

Alexander Pope

Poets, like painters, thus, unskill’d to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev’ry part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress’d,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d,
Something, whose truth convinc’d at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
For works may have more wit than does ’em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS 1800

William Wordsworth

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.