One of P.B. Shelley’s most famous poem. “To a Skylark” explains
the powerful grace and beauty of Skylark’s song. Shelley wrote this poem in
1820 after hearing Skylark’s distinctive calls while walking through the port
city of
About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 1792.and died 1822, at the age of 29. He was drowned in a storm while sailing in the gulf of spezzia, in Italy He was a great English poet. He was a preacher. And regarded as a great lyrical poet in English language.
Family
Father – Timothy Shelley (A Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790 to 1792)
Mother- Elizabeth Pilfold
Spouse- Harriet Westbrook, Mary Shelley.
Shelley’s nickname – Mad Shelley
His education
He was educated at Eton and
His main work
Longer poems
Queen Mob
The revolt of Islam
Rosalind and Helen
The masque of Anarchy
Julian and Maddalo
Peter bell
Adonais
Loan and Cynthia
Songs Lyrics and sonnets
To a Skylark
On the death of napoleon
O World! O Life! O Time!
Stanza written in dejection near
To Wordsworth
Ozymandias: a sonnet
The cloud
Lyrical plays
Prometheus unbound
The Cenci
Oedipus Tyrannous
Critical prose work
A Defence of poetry
On the necessity of Atheism
Text of the poem “To a Skylark”
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That form 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 lighting
Of the sunken Sun,
O’er which cloud’s are bright’s 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 board day light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
Keen as the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice id 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 shower 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 rose embower’d
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower’d
Till the scent it gives
Make faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
Sound of vernal shower
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken’d flower,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thought 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 .
Walking 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 shad 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,
The skills to poet were, thou is 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 than, as I am listening now.
Summary of the poem To a Skylark
This poem starts with the speaker spotting a bird named, Skylark, flying above him. He enjoys the song sweetly. The bird‘s song “unpremeditated” is unplanned and sweet. It flies into the clouds and out of sight. The bird represents the pure and real happiness that poet is desperately seeking
The poet embarks on a number of metaphors to compare skylark’s song. He sees the bird as a “high born maiden” that serenades her love below her and spring, or “vernal”, showers that rain on the flower below. The bird is like “rainbow clouds” and the epitome of all “joyous” things.
The next section of the poem is used to ask the bird to reveal what inspires it to sing such a divine song. Is it, the poet asks, “fields, or waves or mountains” could it be he speculates,”shape of sky or plain?” Shelley has never seen anything that could force such sounds from his own voice.
In this section poet describes that the bird must have the ability to see beyond life, understand death, and feel no concern about it. This is why humans may never reach the same state of happiness that the bird exists within. “We” pine for things that we do not have, and even our “sweetest songs” are full of the “saddest thoughts”
At the last, poet pleading with the bird to “teach half the gladness …. That thy brain must know”. This song that would force the world to listen to him must as raptly as he is listening to the Skylark now.
Themes
The themes of the poem are nature and human spirit. The poem is clear celebration of nature and the way it makes human beings feel.
Structure and Form
“To a Skylark by Shelley is a 21 stanza ode that is consistent in its rhyme scheme from the very first to the last stanza. The piece rhymes ABABB, with varying end sounds, from beginning to end.
Meter
The meter is the pattern of beats in a line of poetry. The first four lines of each stanza are written in trochaic trimester: a stressed syllable comes before an unstressed. The fifth longer line of each stanza is written in iambic hexameter.
Literary devices
Poet makes use of several literary devices- as Imagery figures of speech (simile, Apostrophe, Alliteration, metaphor etc.
Conclusion
“To a Skylark” is one of the Shelley’s finest lyric it have single idea which is the contrast between the life of the skylark, an object of nature, and human life this keen sense of contrast runs through the poem like a thread and lends pathos to the otherwise joyful lyric this poem is surprising musical and sweet full of imagination . in this poem poet loves the nature and natural objects.
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