Unit 6: The Lyric Poem

A lyric poem is a highly musical type of poetry that expresses the emotions of a speaker.

A ballad is a poem that tells a story and typically is written in four-line stanzas.

An ode is a lyric poem on a serious theme, usually with varying line lengths and complex stanzas.

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, that follows one of several different rhyme schemes.

An allegory is a work in which characters, events, or settings symbolize, or represent, something else.

An allegory is a work in which characters, events, or settings symbolize, or represent, something else.

As noted earlier, the Romantic lyric poets had broken away from the restraints of Neoclassicism. The narrative voice had become self-consciously liberated and self-aware, the speaker seeking emotional intimacy with the reader.

In the poems of Robert Burns, the traditional Scots dialect replaces the King’s English.

In Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” the tone is colloquial (everyday), primarily because the diction, or word choice, is much less formal than that of much pre-Romantic verse.

Wordsworth uses the Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet form. It contains an octave (group of eight lines) with the rhyme scheme abbaabba followed by a sestet (group of six lines) with the rhyme scheme cdcdcd.

Wordsworth uses the Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet form. It contains an octave (group of eight lines) with the rhyme scheme abbaabba followed by a sestet (group of six lines) with the rhyme scheme cdcdcd.