The Greeks defined a lyric as a song
to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre (lyra). A song is still called a
lyric (the songs in a musical are known as lyrics) but we also use the term
loosely to describe a particular kind of poem in order to distinguish it from
narrative or dramatic verse of any kind.
A lyric is usually fairly short, not
often longer than fifty or sixty lines, and often only between a dozen and
thirty lines; and it usually expresses the feelings and thoughts of a single
speaker (not necessarily the poet himself) in a personal and subjective
fashion. The range and variety of lyric verse is immense, and lyric poetry,
which is to be found in most literatures, comprises the bulk of all poetry.
Probably the earliest lyric poetry is
Egyptian (c. 2600 BC). The Pyramid texts of this period reveal examples of the
funeral song (a kind of elegy), the song of praise to the king (a type of ode),
and an invocation to the gods (a form of hymn). Inscriptions on tombs of the
same period include the songs of shepherds and fishermen. Later works (C. 1550
BC) include a love-song and an epitaph .
Apart from some Hebrew lyric poetry,
the most memorable contribution in ancient times came from the Greeks. Like the
Egyptian and Hebrew, the Greek lyric originated in religious ceremonial. Greek
lyrics were sung or chanted, sometimes to the accompaniment of a dance. The
dithyramb was originally sung and then took on the shape of a formal
dance. These dithyrambic rhythms were probably the prototypes of the ode ,
or song of celebration (with divisions of strophe and antistrophe), which
Pindar and Sophocles, among others, were to write.