ODE TO A SKYLARK
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
The poet says that the bird pours out an intense joy that its heart contains from Heaven or a place
similar to Heaven. The sweet melodies flows from the bird without any conscious effort.
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.
It’s song and ascent are simultaneous. They seem to be part of the same process. It does not like to
come back to earth., because the earthly life cannot inspire it to such ecstatic song. The birs is
not much different from Shelley’s poetic imagination which rises higher and higher.
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 bird takes a bath in the golden colour of sunset and becomes the spirit of joy. It has no body to
cause suffering. The bird is not tired because it’s race has just began.
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,
The bird has melted in the reddish blue colour of the evening like a star gets melted when the sun
rises. The poet says that though invisible, the presence of the bird is felt by its high pitched
joyous musical voice.
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.
The bird is compared to the light that comes from the moon (or Venus, the morning star) whose
light gets dimmer with the increasing light of the sun at dawn.
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.
Just as solitary cloud stores moonlight and diffuse all over the sky, the joy in the Skylark’s song
floods the whole atmosphere.
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.
The poet says that humans don’t know the exact nature of the bird as it is from Heaven and can’t
compare it with anything.
The rain of melody of the bird is beautiful than the raindrops from the rainbow clouds.
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:
The bird is compared to the poet’s deep thinking and singing hymns spontaneously till the world is
made to sympathize with hopes and fears.
Those feelings are there in the world just like the star that shines in the day. Only poet can make
people see that.
Here, the poet shows the relationship between nature and art.
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:
Here the bird is compared to a high-born maiden in a palace. She is denied the freedom to love. She
sings not to delight but for her own comfort, but it flows out of her room and delight others just
as the skylark’s song delights people though it only sings for its own pleasure.
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:
The glow worm is hidden by the view of flowers and grass, but it’s light can be seen. Similarly, the
bird is hidden but it’s music can be heard.
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:
The rose is enveloped by its own green leaves. We cannot see it yet we can enjoy its fragrance
scattered in the air by the winds. In the same way the Skylark is invisible, but its song delights
us.
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.
The sons of rain falling on grass in the spring season, making the grass shine and the flowers fresh,
but nothing can be compared to the song. Nothing can beat the skylark’s song.
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.
The poet says that the praise of love or wine can never produce the kind of joy that the bird does.
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.
An occasion of marriage and celebration of victory in war are the two motives that urge men to
poetic utterance, but even such jubilant songs sung by men there is a void. It can’t be matched
with skylark’s song.
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?
He wants to know what the source of its happy melody might be, whether it is fields, waves,
mountains, sky, love towards another skylark or the 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.
He cannot imagine connecting its song to sadness or depression.
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?
He imagines that the skylark can understand the mysteries of life and death. It can see beyond what
humans can see. If not, how can it sing in such a beautiful manner!
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.
the trouble with mortals is that they’re always thinking about past and future. Man loves the
expression of the tragic aspects of life in art. Man’s life is such a paradoxical blending of joy and
sorrow.
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.
If humans were exempt from sorrow, they probably don’t know the real joy.
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!
its song for poet, can be much more inspiring than the music of all the delightful sounds and the
treasures of knowledge found in books.
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.
He wants the bird to teach half the secret of its happiness. The poet the would be able to capture the
attention of the world as the bird does now. Shelley always had the complaint that the world has
failed to understand his ideas.
In short, this poem is all about man’s search for happiness.
Form
The eccentric, songlike, five-line stanzas of “To a Skylark”—all twenty-one of them—follow the
same pattern: the first four lines are metered in trochaic trimeter, the fifth in iambic hexameter (a
line which can also be called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme of each stanza is extremely
simple: ABABB.
Commentary
If the West Wind was Shelley’s first convincing attempt to articulate an aesthetic philosophy
through metaphors of nature, the skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic
expression, the “harmonious madness” of pure inspiration. The skylark’s song issues from a state
of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of complete unity with Heaven through nature; its
song is motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint
of melancholy or of the bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylark’s unimpeded song
rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the
speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all, but a “Spirit,” a “sprite,” a “poet hidden /
In the light of thought.”
