yric poetry refers to a short poem, often with songlike qualities, that

expresses the speaker’s personal emotions and feelings. Historically

intended to be sung and accompany musical instrumentation, lyric now
describes a broad category of non-narrative poetry, including elegies,
odes, and sonnets.

History of Lyric Poetry:

Lyric poetry began as a fixture of ancient Greece, classified against other

categories of poetry at the time of classical antiquity: dramas (written in
verse) and epic poems. The lyric was far shorter, distinguished also by its
focus on the poet’s state of mind and personal themes rather than
narrative arc.

Most typically accompanying the lyre, a harp-like instrument from which

lyric poetry derives its name, these poems would also be sung to other
instruments and other times recited. Classical musician-poets from the
Archaic Greek period include Sappho, one of the most widely regarded
lyric poets of all time. Her lyric, numbered “XII,” begins: 

In a dream I spoke with the Cyprus-born,

            And said to her,

“Mother of beauty, mother of joy,

Why hast thou given to men

“This thing called love, like the ache of a wound

            In beauty's side,

To burn and throb and be quelled for an hour

And never wholly depart?“

Lyric poetry appears in a variety of forms, the most popular of which is

arguably the sonnet: traditionally, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic
pentameter. Sir Thomas Wyatt and of course William
Shakespeare helped popularize the classical form for English
audiences. William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” is a
great example of a sonnet adapted, at the time, for the 19th century.