If the singer is obliged carefully to select and reject, he is only doing what the composer did before him. For the song writer’s task is one that will test the soundness of his musicianship and his art. The song is short. It will probably be sung among a number of other short songs. It has every chance of being forgotten. The composer can waste no time. With little or no preluding he must strike a melodic phrase that in smallest compass is worth hearing and worth remembering. He has none of the opportunities of the symphonist or the opera writer. He cannot lead up to his chief theme with a long expressive orchestral crescendo. He cannot introduce it at the moment when his audience is keyed up and receptive over a tense emotional story. If the melody of the song is not worth the trouble, no amount of decoration can make it so. If one phrase out of four in the song is good and the rest mediocre, the song is as much a failure as though it had no single bar of beauty. When the composer has written his song, he has committed himself. He stands exposed to the universe without protection, without excuse. He has chosen the test with which genius is tested--to be great within narrow limits. If his music speaks to the heart it speaks in words of one syllable. If the basic materials of a song are so simple, it is evident that the misplacing of a single note is a very serious error. The expressive phrase might have stood in a dozen slightly different forms. It was a delicate judgment and selection that chose exactly this one. The phrase, if it is to express something of importance, must suggest a great deal more than it can say. This is the problem of the _lyric_--the personal song of the emotions--whether in words or music. If a poet is to express the whole tenderness and fury of love in eight, twelve, or sixteen lines he must select just the right details that will suggest the whole epic of love that he did not write. The structure and the language may be simple in the extreme. ‘My luv’ is like a red, red rose,’ sings Burns in one of the most beautiful love lyrics ever written. The poem is only a succession of the simplest poetic figures, similes; impressive effects of rhyme and metre are not to be found. But every one of the similes is a masterpiece, suggesting in striking manner the variety and extravagance of the lover’s feelings. ‘My luv’ is like a melody that’s sweetly play’d in tune,’ continues the poet. ‘As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in luv’ am I’--and from this point the imagery sweeps up and up with increasing majesty and frenzy--‘And I will luv’ thee still, my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun; Oh! I will luv’ thee still, my dear, while the sands o’ life shall run.’ We can imagine Milton building up a long and magnificent description, in a whole blank verse canto, of the rocks melting in the heat of the sun. But Burns dazzles our imagination by