Ebook Select Poems of William Barnes

A story which was told the writer by Mr. Barnes himself may be apposite here. When a pupil of his was announced in the Times as having come out at the top in the Indian Service examination-list of those days, the schoolmaster was overwhelmed with letters from anxious parents requesting him at any price to make their sons come out at the top also. He replied that he willingly would, but that it took two to do it. It depends, in truth, upon the other person, the reader, whether certain numbers shall be raised to lyric pitch or not and if he does not bring to the page of th'ese potentially lyric productions a lyrical quality of mind, they must be classed, for him, as non-lyrical.