To The Skylark

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"To a Skylark" The persona extols the virtues of the skylark, a bird that soars and sings high in the air. It flies too high to see, but it can be heard, making it like a spirit, or a maiden in a tower, or a glow-worm hidden in the grass, or the scent of a rose. The skylark’s song is better than the sound of rain and better than human poetry. What is the subject of the bird’s song, so free of the pains of love? Perhaps it sings because it knows that the alternative is death. The bird does not have the same longings and cares that interfere with human happiness. Yet, it is these things that help us appreciate the pure beauty of the birdsong; perhaps the skylark’s song could become the persona’s muse. Analysis The speaker seems a bit jealous of the freedom of the skylark, which travels where it pleases. It doesn’t matter when or where—whether it is dusk (“the sunken sun”) or morning (“the silver sphere” refers to the morning star)—the speaker feels that the skylark is always flying high above. Even if we do not see it, or even hear it, “we feel it is there.” The speaker admits to not knowing whether the bird is happy, however, or from where it receives its joy. He puts five stanzas in the middle of the poem in metaphors, comparing the skylark to other living objects in nature (poets, a maiden, worms, and roses), which express love, pain, and sorrow. None of them, however, has the expressive ability of the singing bird. The poet hopes to learn about the realm of spirit from the bird, plainly asking to teach him how it manages to continue on with its “rapture so divine” without ever wavering in pain or sorrow. Even the happiest of human songs, like a wedding song (“Chorus hymeneal”), does not compare to the song of a skylark. The song of the skylark, rather than the skylark itself, is what holds all the power. It is the song that can have the “light of thought” of
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