"Or were I in the wildest waste, Of earth and air, of earth and air, The desert were a paradise If thou wert there, if thou wert there. Or were I monarch o' the globe, Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen." Of course, this is lyric. Though not the lover of Jessie, in imagination he became such, and hence the lover's feeling, though the result of an imaginary situation, completely predominates. The point, however, here is that it has a monologue form, and that we make a mistake in conceiving that every poem which Burns wrote is purely personal. The monologue situation was so intensely realized by his imagination that his poetry, while lyric in form, cannot be adequately understood unless we perceive the species of dramatic element which a true understanding of the monologue should enable us to realize. Burns's poems often contain dramatic elements peculiar to the monologue and must be rendered with an imaginary speaker and an imaginary listener. Little conception of character is given, and, of course, the lyric element greatly predominates over all else. Those poems in which he speaks directly out of his own heart in a purely lyric spirit, such as "Highland Mary," are more highly prized. But if we did not constantly overlook the peculiar dramatic element in some of his other poems we should doubtless appreciate them more highly. Even "To a Mountain Daisy" and "To a Field Mouse" are monologues in form. Coming to the consideration of more recent literature, we find in lyric poems an increasing prevalence of the objective or dramatic element. Whitman's "Oh, Captain, my Captain," seems to be the direct unburdening of the writer's overweighted heart. He does not materially differ in his feeling for Lincoln from his fellow-citizens, and every one, in reading the poem aloud, adopts the emotion as his own. There is certainly no dramatic emotion in the heart of the speaker in the poem. But there is a definite figurative situation and representation of the Ship of State, coming in from its long voyage,--that is, the Civil War,--and a picture of Lincoln, the captain, lying upon the deck. This objective element enables us to grasp the situation and more delicately suggests Lincoln, whose name does not occur in the poem. It is almost impossible to separate the different forms of poetry. We can discern differences, but they are not "separable entities." The monologue is possibly as much the outgrowth of the lyric as of the dramatic spirit. It is, in fact, a union of the two. Notice the title of some of Browning's books: "Dramatic Idyls," "Dramatic Lyrics," "Dramatic Romances."