To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Poem, Summary & Analysis)

To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Poem, Summary & Analysis)

  

Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Broadridge Heath, near Horsham, West Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. Shelley’s early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride. At age six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. He was a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem. Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.

Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.

To a Skylark

(The Poem)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

 

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

 

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

 

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven,

In the broad day-light

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

 

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

 

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.

 

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

 

Like a Poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

 

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace-tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

 

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aëreal hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

 

Like a rose embower'd

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflower'd,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

 

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awaken'd flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

 

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

 

Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Match'd with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

 

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

 

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

 

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

 

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

 

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

 

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

 

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Summary

‘To a Skylark’ is a musical lyric, in which the poet proves the unseen presence of the Skylark and listens the inaudible music of the Skylark. He prays the Skylark for its goodness.

The poet starts his poem by welcoming the Skylark and then with the help of images he proves its presence around him. In the last part of the poem, he compares the life of the man with that of the Skylark and requests it for its harmonious madness.

In the opening lines of the ode the poet welcomes the Skylark by calling it “Blithe spirit”. He does not consider the skylark a bird. It seems to him like a cloud of fire, which sings while soaring and soars while singing. The poet then gives a beautiful imagery and says, that the Skylark floats on the brightening clouds like a soul, who has just freed itself from the body.

From the 16th line of this ode the poet tries to prove the the unseen presence of the Skylark. This he does with the help of similes and imageries. He says, that the Skylark is unseen like a star of heaven in the broad daylight and also like the keen moonlight in the bright light of the sun. In the daylight the light of the moon and that of the stars are not seen but we can feel that it is there, similarly, the presence of the Skylark could also be felt.

The poet further says, that all the earth and air get filled up with the inaudible sounds of the Skylark as the moon rains out her beams and overflows the heaven. He continues the thought and says that as we cannot see the drops of rainbow clouds but we can see the colors similarly, we cannot see the Skylark but we hear its melody. He further tries to show the power of its melody by saying that while singing it does not give heed to any feeling or emotion of the earth. Like a high-born maiden this Skylark sooths its soul with the music sweet as love.

The poet says, that as we cannot see a glow-warm screened with flowers and grass but we know that it is there, similarly, we can sense the presence of a rose flower by smelling its fragrance. In the same way we can feel the presence of the Skylark by its song.

The poet gives us an idea of the freshness of the song of the Skylark by saying that the music of the Skylark is more joyous, clear and fresh than “…..sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass and rain awakened flowers”. He also compares the song of the Skylark with the praises of ‘Love’ or of ‘Wine’, ‘chorus hymeneal’ or ‘triumphal chant’ and find that all our songs are “a thing where in we feel there is some hidden want”. The poet is surprised, when he finds that there is no pain in the music of Skylark. He wants to know the source of inspiration of its music, “what objects are the fountains of thy happy strains”. The poet praises its song when he says, “Thou lovest but never knew love’s sad satiety”.

The poet says, that all the time we mortal think of death but after listening the song of Skylark, he comes to know that things are more true and deep otherwise… “How could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream”? According to the poet the major drawback, in the songs of mortals, is that they contain the saddest thoughts. He says, that our songs cannot be matched with the songs of the Skylark because its songs are better than the treasures of books and better than all measures of delightful sounds. In other words, the music of Skylark is incomparable.

In the last stanza the poet begs the Skylark for its gladness, so that when the harmonious gladness flows through his lips the world would listen to him as he is listening the skylark now.

Analysis

The poem is divided into 21 stanzas, each of five lines. The rhyming pattern in each stanza is ab, abb. He has not followed any regular rhythmic pattern. The poem is romantic throughout. The poet has given imageries in abundance. The imageries are in such a quick succession that we fail to keep pace with them.

This poem is almost unique among Shelley’s works; its strange form of stanza, with four compact lines and one very long line, and its lilting, songlike diction work to create the effect of spontaneous poetic expression flowing musically and naturally from the poet’s mind. Structurally, each stanza tends to make a single, quick point about the skylark, or to look at it in a sudden, brief new light; still, the poem does flow, and gradually advances the mini-narrative of the speaker watching the skylark flying higher and higher into the sky, and envying its inspiration—which, if he were to capture it in words, would cause the world to listen.