Passage 1
A lyric is a subjective poem of intense personal emotion whose principal quality is its musical form. Poe, master of the lyric, was led to explain all poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. Because great poetry is often pure music, haunting melody, and chiming syllables, the reader should not glance through poetry as he read his newspaper or the latest magazine--skipping a word here and a line there, and still hope to get what the author had intended for him. Poetry being music, like all other forms of music, it gains its meaning when interpreted by the human voice.
It is the special function of lyrical poetry to give pleasure through this musical quality no less than through fine contemplation of beauty it inspires--beauty of thought, of feeling, of expression, and of technical skill. But poetry is more than a great pleasure. It should also be an outlet for our own unspoken thoughts and our varied moods. It makes articulate our choked-up passageways of speech, giving adequate expression to our pent-up loves and joys and glories, and furnishes release and relief to our fears, grieves and sorrows. A great poet takes our half-formed thoughts, or suppressed moods, our crushed desires, and needs, and leads them out into the open, endowing them with a harmony, and completeness ...
Great verse can help to vitalize our thinking about the commonplace and elemental in life, and can idealize and give meaning to the simplest things in creation. Listen to Tennyson:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand,
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
What isthe passage mainly about?
A.Mixed emotions
B.Great poets
C.Lyric poems
D.Musical forms