Initially, lyric meant a song. In literature, the word lyric refers to a short poetic form, which has no restriction of meter. A significant characteristic of the lyric is the expression of personal emotion which tends to take place in the first person mode. Accordingly, "The Wife's Lament" is a fitting example of Anglo-Saxon poetry; the wife transmit feelings of loneliness and despair when she says: "Full of grief, I make this poem about myself, about my own fate".
