Poetry is a poetic composition that expresses the feelings and inner emotions of the author. The word lyric comes from lyre, because the ancient poems sang accompanying himself on that instrument. In his Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes three genres are the epic, drama and poetry. Lyric poetry, but with distinctive features as the historical period, was present throughout the development of Western literature. Among the major authors may be mentioned Greek lyric Sappho and Pindar. The genre came to Rome, where he distinguished Catullus and Horace. From medieval times, the lyric became a loving and bias, since the Renaissance, became a full expression of the intimacy of the author. The events of reality are reflected in the lyric poetry colored by the subjectivity of the poet. One of the periods of peak brightness was lyrical romanticism.
Among them stood the Italian Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, the Spanish Garcilaso de la Vega, the English William Shakespeare, William Worsdworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats and the French Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine, and the Germans Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Heinrich Heine. Most of the nineteenth and the twentieth century can be framed as a lyric.
Among the Greeks, the muse of lyric and dance was Terpsichore. Usually it is represented with a lyre.