From a Poet

Here is a Valentine's Day excerpt from Woodland Poems entitled:

Atheotha and Hayuya

Hayuya: Love as dreams of deepest matter of night,                For love that sleeps I take my care,                Love purest-born, accepting sight,                Forlorn of woman's touch upon my hair:                For love of Atheotha I repair.
Atheotha: Never have I dreamed of sympathy's sight                   For more to see in love to dream at night,                   Of he to be my only care;                   For love, my cares already white,                   With beads and purple shells I braid my hair.
Hayuya: This moon was white this night my love was made,                The night I saw a gleaming light,                Dancing in the green-corn parade                When quick my hand caressed her passing sight:                Our eyes soon met and thought that love just might.
               When I was touched as by her eyes alone                I saw upon my heart inside, …

Lyric poetry lives in its present means by he who composes it. From it the cloud extends which overtops the mountain, soon to leave it snow-clad and brilliant in the morning light. In it, the human condition is apt and sentiments that have been felt by the first of humans, the same as those that will be felt by the last, are with skill waved off in concise sentences. None can be long-winded in the lyric and succeed.
A lyric, then, is a poem of no great length which embodies a mood wherein the poet has felt intensely his idea and the words which represent it. Some of the most recognized examples of lyric poetry in the English language are Shakespeare's sonnets, but some interesting examples may also include Sir Philip Sydney, who laid the ground-work for Shakespeare's sonnets; William Collins with his Ode to Evening; John Keats with his famous cycle of odes; or the following example from Emily Dickinson:

The Grass

The grass so little has to do--
A sphere of simple green,
With …