P.B Shelley's To A Skylark
“To a Skylark”
Summary
The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a “blithe Spirit” rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full heart pours “profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” The skylark flies higher and higher, “like a cloud of fire” in the blue sky, singing as it flies. In the “golden lightning” of the sun, it floats and runs, like “an unbodied joy.” As the skylark flies higher and higher, the speaker loses sight of it, but is still able to hear its “shrill delight,” which comes down as keenly as moonbeams in the “white dawn,” which can be felt even when they are not seen. The earth and air ring with the skylark’s voice, just as Heaven ...
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glow-worm, scattering light among the flowers and grass in which it is hidden. It is like a rose embowered in its own green leaves, whose scent is blown by the wind until the bees are faint with “too much sweet.” The skylark’s song surpasses “all that ever was, / Joyous and clear and fresh,” whether the rain falling on the “twinkling grass” or the flowers the rain awakens.
Calling the skylark “Sprite or Bird,” the speaker asks it to tell him its “sweet thoughts,” for he has never heard anyone or anything call up “a flood of rapture so divine.” Compared to the skylark’s, any music would seem lacking. What objects, the speaker asks, are “the fountains of thy happy strain?” Is it fields, waves, mountains, the sky, the plain, or “love of thine own kind” or “ignorance or pain”? Pain and languor, the speaker says, “never came near” the skylark: it loves, but has never known “love’s sad satiety.” Of death, the skylark must know “things more true and deep” than mortals could dream; ...
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P.B Shelley's To A Skylark. (2011, March 18). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/P-B-Shelleys-To-A-Skylark/96294
"P.B Shelley's To A Skylark." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 18 Mar. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/P-B-Shelleys-To-A-Skylark/96294>
"P.B Shelley's To A Skylark." Essayworld.com. March 18, 2011. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/P-B-Shelleys-To-A-Skylark/96294.
"P.B Shelley's To A Skylark." Essayworld.com. March 18, 2011. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/P-B-Shelleys-To-A-Skylark/96294.
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