What is a lyric poem?

A lyric poem is a poem that speaks of personal or emotional feelings, traditionally in the present tense, and with a song-like quality. In modern examples, much lyric poetry shares the same rhyming schemes.

Traditional Greek lyric poetry shows evidence of some form of musical accompaniment. This has continued on to modern times wherein most lyric poems are set to a beat or a musical score. Lyric poetry is one of the most common forms of poetry and has been seen from ancient Greece to most of the dominant European cultures of the Medieval period, and even in some forms of classical Chinese poetry.