At any rate , it is necessary to remember that lyrics were always definitely composed for musical setting .sx Sidney puts high among the other virtues of poetry " the just prayses it hath , by beeing the only fit speech for Musick ( Musick , I say , the most divine striker of the sences ) , " and describing the poet he says :sx " Hee cometh to you with words set in delightfull proportion , either accompanied with or prepared for , the well inchaunting skill of Musicke .sx " Ronsard advises the would-be poet that he must not forget the necessities of music :sx The Arte of English Poesie , surveying the history of poetry , declares that poets were " the first artificial Musiciens of the world .sx " It goes on to say that the presence of music distinguished lyric from other kinds of poetry , for whereas some wrote long serious poems , " Others who more delighted to write songs or ballads of pleasure , to be sung with the voice , and to the harpe , lute , or citheron , and such other musical instruments , they were called melodious poets ( melici ) , or by a more common name , Lirique poets :sx of which sort was Pindarus , Anacreon , and Callimachus , with others among the Greeks , Horace and Catullus among the Latines .sx " Campion too , talks of " such verses as are fit for Ditties or Odes ; which we may call Lyricall ) , because they are apt to be soong to an instrument , if they were adorn'd with convenient notes .sx " Most of the lyrics we have in the miscellanies are from musical volumes , and it is clear that a large proportion of lyrics were imparted by the poet directly to the composer , and first became known to a restricted public as songs , reading lyrics being regarded almost as a makeshift , so much was the musical setting a regular accompaniment .sx The Paradise of Daynty Devises ( 1576 ) , indeed , claims in its dedication that the " ditties " are " both pithy and pleasant , as well for invention as for metre , and will yield a far greater delight being as they are so aptly made to be set to any song in five parts , or sung to an instrument , " and this seems to suggest that when a metre was common and the poem had no special music provided for it any tune that fitted might be pressed into service .sx The knowledge that lyrics were to be sung not read was never far from the minds of Elizabethan poets as they penned their verses .sx It has left traces on both matter and style , if indeed we can separate what in genuine poetry are bound to be linked .sx The difficulty of mating verse and music is largely that music moves so much more slowly than poetry .sx A single word establishes innumerable associations in the mind of the hearer , but a single note or chord has no meaning apart from its context .sx The whole history of language is behind our response to any one word , and language serves much more varied and complicated purposes than musical sounds do .sx Our total response to a poem is formed by the rapid accumulation of responses to the individual words and the syntax of the phrases ; our response to music can only be to a whole movement or to a well-defined section of a whole movement .sx It follows that the range and flexibility of the appeal may be greater in poetry than in music , that is , if we consider only the kind of music which can be joined to poetry .sx A short poem may touch on a very large number of moods and ideas without losing its essential unity .sx But music must have some time to establish a mood .sx This is not a limitation of music :sx it is due to the fact that music is really an entirely independent mode of experience , and its emotional side , which is the only side that can be paralleled by poetry , is in a greater measure a matter of conventional associations , the valuable part of musical experience being just that which cannot be translated into terms of other arts .sx The moods which can be translated are the clear and simple ones ; quick changes of mood and intellectual conceits cannot , though they are the characteristic virtues of poetry .sx It is very easy to set Spenser or A. E. Housman to music , but impossible to set Donne or T. S. Eliot .sx No English poet understood these things better than Dryden .sx Though in his spoken verse he was concerned with restraining metaphysical wit within the correct form of the couplet , yet when he came to write Alexander's Feast he attempted no quick play of conceits , but merely prepared for the musician a series of movements , each representing a broad passion .sx The composer could neglect the individual words , except for rhythmic purposes , and write a suite , in which each movement recalled conventional associations with simple passions .sx King Arthur , which he wrote with Purcell , is another interesting study in the same and a few other kinds of technique .sx The Elizabethans had plenty of the same sort of erudition , and one cannot help suspecting that this had something to dowith the retention of the Petrarchan style and the fact that the metaphysical school in the lyric did not come until the 17th century , although portents had already appeared in the dramatic verse .sx The Spenserian poets have precisely that slow movement , that simple and sensuous style which we have desiderated above as eminently suitable for musical setting .sx A typical example of the kind of writing I mean will be found in a stanza of Michael Drayton that was set to music by the madrigalist Ward :sx - .sx A musician setting this stanza has an easy task .sx It divides neatly into two definite sections of four lines each .sx The musician can treat each in turn as representing one mood and contrast them .sx That is just what Ward does .sx The first four lines of his madrigal have graceful , smooth-sliding phrases , painting a delicate pastoral scene .sx Then in the second half is a change , and slow-moving suspensions express Cupid's plight in the conventional manner of the madrigalists .sx Such writing is common in the poets of the time , whether they are intending to write for music or not ; it arose from a habit of mind formed in musical schools .sx This habit made their rhythm , too , smooth and artificial , for , as the writer of the Arte of English Poesie explained , " Our poeticall proportion holdeth of the Musical .sx " There is no doubt that the vivacity of the time tended towards the rapid play of conceits , the wit and the speech rhythm of the metaphysical poets .sx That such a style did not make headway until the seventeenth century , when the declamatory style had made music entirely subservient to poetic rhythm , is surely not unconnected with the musical preoccupations of 16th century lyric poets .sx In form the Elizabethan lyric is completely dominated by musical preoccupations .sx I have time to mention only two of the most obvious musical necessities that poets had always in mind .sx The first concerns strophic form .sx Though the madrigal had the distinction of being a non-strophic form , it was quite alien to the English tradition , and the vast majority of lyrics were written to be set as ayres , which were based on .sx the characteristic English strophic form .sx In modern poetry the poet's matter is the sole arbiter of rhythmic variations between different stanzas of a poem , and if a musician , desiring to set the poem to music , finds it difficult to fit all the stanzas to the same tune , that is his misfortune .sx But the Elizabethan song-writer was exceedingly considerate to his musician .sx The composers were very particular about the declamation of words in their musical settings , that no line might seem to limp to the phrase meant for it , and to smooth their path we can often see poets making special efforts to make their stanzas exactly parallel .sx A good test is when a stop occurs in the middle of a line , for then the sense is bound in narrow confines .sx If then in the first stanza a line runs :sx " Go , crystal tears , like to the morning showers , " .sx then in the next stanza will be an exactly similar line :sx " Haste , restless .sx sighs , and let your burning breath .sx " ( Dowland I , 9 .sx ) If the first line is .sx " Author of light , revive my dying sprite , " .sx the next stanza will have a corresponding line , .sx " Fountain of health , my soul's deep wounds recure .sx " Or perhaps .sx " Awake , awake , thou heavy sprite , " .sx will be paralleled by .sx " Get up , get up , thou leaden man .sx " ( Campion I , 16 .sx ) Such parallelism was especially carefully observed when words of great emotional significance were brought into prominence in any part of a stanza .sx In a song of Dowland's , for instance , the first stanza contains the broken phrase :sx " To see , to hear , to touch , to kiss , to die , " and the corresponding lines of the other stanzas are :sx " I sit , I sigh , I weep , I faint , I die .sx " " Her smiles my springs that makes my joys to grow .sx " " To see the fruits and joys that some do find .sx " " Her eyes of fire her heart of flint is made .sx " " By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts .sx " To follow the many important impulses that the practice of singing lyrics gave to the development of poetry is beyond the possibilities of a short paper like this .sx But great as wasthe influence of music on poetry , it was no greater than that of poetry on music .sx For in the 16th century music was still to some extent dependent on poetry , and both the characteristic art forms of the century are completely dominated by literary aims .sx The simplest of musical forms is the song form , in which the melody reproduces the rhythms and metrical relationships of the lines of the poetry .sx Up to the 16th century this was the only real form known to musicians .sx The elaborate motet music of the 15th century was not much more than an extensive decoration of the simple song melody , and the further it broke away from the basic song the more formless it tended to become .sx That is why masses were so often written round popular tunes like " L'homme arme " or " Westron Winde .sx " The Nether-land composers had , however , discovered the fugal method of developing the song form into musical compositions of some length and ingenuity .sx In the works of Dufay and his con-temporaries the basic song melody is surrounded by imitating parts of abstract music that disregard the words and were in fact often supplied by instruments .sx This is the style of composition that prevailed in England in the early part of the 16th century and culminated in the first two books of Byrd .sx Here , as Prof .sx Dent has reminded us , and as Byrd himself plainly says , " are divers songs , which being originally made for Instruments to expresse the harmonie , and voyce to pronounce the dittie , are now framed in all parts for voyces to sing the same " that is to say , the " first singing part " or simple song melody , which declames the words syllabically , is the basis of the form , and the other voices are merely instrumental parts that provided a continuous background .sx But the madrigal , which arrived in England with Morley , was a somewhat different compromise between poetry and music .sx In Italy it supplanted the semi-popular style of the Frottola , which had displaced the lofty Petrarchan style during the 15th century .sx The Frottola was essentially harmonic ; any imitations among the voices were purely ornamental , and the melody was always on the top .sx It was practised mainly by improvising lutenist poets , and was too popular to suit the style of the Netherland composers who were drifting to Italy at the beginning of the 16th century and bringing their elaborate Church music with them .sx They therefore took advantage of a literary movement that was turning educated attention from the decadent model of the Frottola to a revival of the Petrarchan style .sx Bembo .sx the leader of the new movement , declared that " , " and this suited well the temper of the Netherlanders , who quickly put their art at the service of the new kind of text .sx