A metrical romance or lesser epic is a narrative poem, shorter and less dignified than the epic.  Longfellow’s Evangeline and Scott’s Marmion and Lady of the Lake are examples of this kind of poetry.

A metrical tale is a narrative poem somewhat simpler and shorter than the metrical romance, but more complex than the ballad.  Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn, Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, and Lowell’s Vision of Sir Launfal are examples of the tale.

A ballad is the shortest and most simple of all narrative poems.  It relates but a single incident and has a very simple structure.  In this kind of poetry the interest centers upon the incident rather than upon any beauty or elegance of language.  Many of the Robin Hood Ballads are well known.  Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome and Longfellow’s Wreck of the Hesperus are other examples of the ballad.  It may be well to note here that it is not always possible to draw definite lines between two different kinds of narrative poetry.  In fact, there will sometimes be a difference of opinion as regards the classification.

B.  Lyric poetry was the name originally applied to poetry that was to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, but now the name is often applied to poems that are not intended to be sung at all.  Lyric poetry deals primarily with the feelings and emotions.  Love, hate, jealousy, grief, hope, and praise are emotions that may be expressed in lyric poetry.  Its chief varieties are the song, the ode, the elegy, and the sonnet.

A song is a short poem intended to be sung.  Songs may be divided into sacred and secular. Jerusalem, the Golden, and Lead, Kindly Light, are examples of sacred songs.  Secular songs may be patriotic, convivial, or sentimental.

An ode expresses exalted emotion and is more complex in structure than the song.  Some of the best odes in our language are Dryden’s Ode to St. Cecilia, Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark, and Lowell’s Commemoration Ode.

An elegy is a lyric pervaded by the feeling of grief or melancholy.  Milton’s Lycidas, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard are all noted elegies.

A sonnet is a lyric poem of fourteen lines which deals with a single idea or sentiment.  It is not a stanza taken from a poem, but is a complete poem itself.  In the Italian sonnet and those modeled after it, the emotional feeling rises through the first two quatrains, reaching its climax at or near the end of the eighth line, and then subsides through the two tercets which make up the remaining six lines.  If the sentiment expressed does not adjust itself to this ebb and flow, it is not suitable for a sonnet.  Milton’s sonnet on his blindness is one of the best.  Notice the emotional transition in the middle of the eighth line.  This sonnet will also illustrate the fixed rhyme scheme:—­