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To a Skylark Summary & Analysis
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Skylark Summary & Analysis
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “To a Skylark”

1Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

2Bird thou never wert,

3That from Heaven, or near it,

4Pourest thy full heart

5In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

6Higher still and higher

7From the earth thou springest

8Like a cloud of fire;

9The blue deep thou wingest,

10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

11In the golden lightning

12Of the sunken sun,

13O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

14Thou dost float and run;

15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

16The pale purple even

17Melts around thy flight;

18Like a star of Heaven,

19In the broad day-light

20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

21Keen as are the arrows

22Of that silver sphere,

23Whose intense lamp narrows

24In the white dawn clear

25Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

26All the earth and air

27With thy voice is loud,

28As, when night is bare,

29From one lonely cloud

30The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.

31What thou art we know not;

32What is most like thee?

33From rainbow clouds there flow not

34Drops so bright to see

35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

36Like a Poet hidden

37In the light of thought,

38Singing hymns unbidden,

39Till the world is wrought

40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

41Like a high-born maiden

42In a palace-tower,

43Soothing her love-laden

44Soul in secret hour

45With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

46Like a glow-worm golden

47In a dell of dew,

48Scattering unbeholden

49Its aëreal hue

50Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

51Like a rose embower'd

52In its own green leaves,

53By warm winds deflower'd,

54Till the scent it gives

55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

56Sound of vernal showers

57On the twinkling grass,

58Rain-awaken'd flowers,

59All that ever was

60Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

61Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

62What sweet thoughts are thine:

63I have never heard

64Praise of love or wine

65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

66Chorus Hymeneal,

67Or triumphal chant,

68Match'd with thine would be all

69But an empty vaunt,

70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

71What objects are the fountains

72Of thy happy strain?

73What fields, or waves, or mountains?

74What shapes of sky or plain?

75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

76With thy clear keen joyance

77Languor cannot be:

78Shadow of annoyance

79Never came near thee:

80Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

81Waking or asleep,

82Thou of death must deem

83Things more true and deep

84Than we mortals dream,

85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

86We look before and after,

87And pine for what is not:

88Our sincerest laughter

89With some pain is fraught;

90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

91Yet if we could scorn

92Hate, and pride, and fear;

93If we were things born

94Not to shed a tear,

95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

96Better than all measures

97Of delightful sound,

98Better than all treasures

99That in books are found,

100Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

101Teach me half the gladness

102That thy brain must know,

103Such harmonious madness

104From my lips would flow

105The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

  • “To a Skylark” Introduction

    • One of Percy Bysshe Shelley's most famous poems, "To a Skylark" describes the powerful grace and beauty of the skylark's song. Shelley wrote "To a Skylark" in 1820 after hearing the bird's distinctive calls while walking through the port city of Livorno, Italy. The poem's speaker addresses the bird directly and praises the purity of its music, later contrasting it with sad, hollow human communication. As an ode to the unmatched splendors of the natural world, and especially its spiritual power, "To a Skylark" remains a quintessential example of Romantic poetry. The poem's unconventional form features a song-like rhyme scheme and bouncy rhythm that subtly mimics the skylark's calls.

  • “To a Skylark” Summary

    • The speaker passionately calls out to a skylark, praising it as a joyous “spirit.” The speaker goes on to explain that the skylark was never really a bird. Rather, the skylark is a creature from Heaven—or at least near Heaven—and from there, the skylark spontaneously pours out its emotions in plentiful, artful strings of musical notes.

      The bird continues to soar, rising higher and higher from the earth, which reminds the speaker of billowing flames. The bird glides throughout the vast, blue sky, flying as it sings and singing as it flies.

      The sun begins to set, giving off a golden light that illuminates the surrounding clouds. The bird drifts about the glimmering sky, as if it’s a disembodied form of happiness only just beginning a race.

      The faint purple evening makes way for the skylark’s flight, dissolving around it and enveloping the bird. The skylark is like a bright star in the sky that can't be seen during the day. The speaker can't see the bird, but still hears its high-pitched song.

      The speaker deems the skylark's song as bright and piercing as moonbeams, whose powerful glow is dimmed by the bright white of the morning sky. Although its light is difficult to make out, the speaker notes, people still perceive that it is present.

      The skylark’s rich calls seem to fill the whole sky and earth below, reminding the speaker of the moon on a clear night—its rays stream out from a solitary cloud, appearing to fill the sky until it overflows.

      As human beings do not truly understand the power of the skylark, the speaker asks the bird for help finding a worthy comparison for it, asking the skylark what other creature or thing is most like itself. The speaker explains that even the light-reflecting water droplets of rainbow clouds pale in comparison to the showers of beautiful music that the skylark rains down.

      The speaker compares the skylark to a poet enveloped in a deep thought. The poet writes uninvited lyrics—brought about by pure creative instinct—until humankind is made sympathetic to the hopes and fears it has previously disregarded.

      Next, the speaker compares the skylark to an aristocratic young woman who secretly sings from the tower of a castle to comfort her soul, which is burdened by love. Her songs are as delightful as love itself, and they fill her chambers.

      According to the speaker, the skylark is also similar to a radiant glow-worm in a small, dew-covered valley. Not out of obligation, but rather of its own free will, the glow-worm distributes its glowing light among the plant life, which hides the insect from view.

      Finally, the speaker likens the skylark to a rose that is sheltered by its own leaves before warm gusts of air sweep them away. The overwhelming sweetness of the flower’s perfume intoxicates nearby bees.

      The speaker goes on to list all the pleasant sounds that cannot compare to the skylark’s song—light springtime rain falling on glistening grass, flowers brought to life by rainfall, and everything else that has ever been happy, sharp, and vibrant.

      Unsure whether the skylark is more like a bird or a fairy, the speaker asks the skylark to educate humankind about its pure, delightful thoughts. The speaker claims to have never heard human communication—lyrics worshiping things like romance and wine—that was as heavenly as the skylark’s impassioned outpourings of emotion.

      In the speaker’s eyes, when measured against the birdsong, even wedding hymns and songs celebrating victories are nothing but hollow boasts that hint at an unspoken desire for something more.

      The speaker wonders aloud about the sources of inspiration behind the skylark’s calls, asking the bird which objects have been the source of its joyful melodies—specific stretches of open land, bodies of water, or mountain ranges? Formations of sky or grassland? Love of other larks or unfamiliarity with suffering?

      Due to the clear, intense happiness in the skylark’s song, the speaker cannot imagine that it is exhausted or has known any trace of irritation. The speaker concludes that the skylark loves but has never experienced the sadness that excessive love can bring.

      Moreover, the speaker believes that the skylark—whether conscious or not—must consider matters of death more deeply and insightfully than mere mortal human beings could imagine. The speaker wonders what else could explain how the skylark’s music flows forth with such beauty and clarity.

      The speaker elaborates on the differences between human concerns and those of the skylark—people look towards the past and the future and long for what they don’t have. Further, even the most genuine human laughter contains some degree of suffering, and the most pleasing songs that people compose also express the most misery.

      Even if humankind was incapable of crying and could reject hatred, vanity, and fear, the speaker still does not believe that it would be able to approximate the skylark’s bliss.

      Addressing the skylark as a creature who dismisses earthly matters, the speaker explains that, to poets, the skylark’s skill is greater than the rhythm of any beautiful sound or any precious piece of information that can be found in a book.

      The speaker makes one final plea to the skylark, asking the bird to share half the knowledge of happiness that it must have. The speaker believes that gaining such knowledge would cause melodious chaos to spill from the speaker’s mouth. Furthermore, the speaker believes that humankind would listen to such verses, just as the speaker listens to the skylark.

  • “To a Skylark” Themes

    • Theme The Majesty and Divinity of Nature

      The Majesty and Divinity of Nature

      The poem’s speaker addresses a skylark: a small, brown bird known for its impressive song, which the bird can sustain continuously even when in flight. The speaker praises the beauty and power of the skylark's calls, repeatedly highlighting the bird's connection to the glory of the natural world. In doing so, the speaker champions the skylark as an example of nature's divinity and majesty—something, the poem implies, that human beings will never fully understand.

      The speaker lovingly describes the intensity and beauty of the skylark's song, playing up the calls' musical quality to drive home just how captivating they are. For example, the speaker describes the birdsong as cascading down onto its listeners in "a rain of melody." Likewise, the speaker wonders how the bird’s "notes flow in such a crystal stream."

      The speaker indicates that the skylark's music powerfully envelops or "washes over" its audience, and later compares it to "music sweet as love" that a maiden uses to comfort herself when she is lonely. But the sound of the skylark is even "better than all measures" that the speaker has heard produced by human beings. In other words, the power of its organic melody is unique to the natural world—it cannot be matched by the sounds of human civilization.

      And it's not just the skylark itself that the speaker details in highly complimentary terms, either; images of natural beauty fill the poem, and they are directly linked to the bird. All this suggests that the skylark embodies the universal splendor of the natural world. The speaker uses a series of similes to compare the skylark's beauty to that of other living things, for example, with the bird releasing its song likened to "a glow-worm golden" spreading its light amongst the plant life "in a dell of dew." The skylark is also compared to a rose whose leaves are swept away by the wind, distributing its sweet scent, which intoxicates nearby insects.

      Religious language appears throughout the poem as well to describe the bird and its setting, imbuing nature with a kind of divine presence. For instance, the skylark's calls come "from Heaven, or near it." By stating that the skylark originates from Heaven or is at least "near" God, the speaker suggests that the bird is similar to a divine being. And in continuing to refer to the sky as "Heaven" throughout the poem, the speaker implies that nature offers spiritual insight, perhaps even salvation.

      The skylark is further linked to divinity in that its calls are so strong that even when the bird is "unseen," the speaker still hears its "shrill delight." Here, the word "shrill" highlights the piercing quality of the skylark's voice, while "delight" emphasizes the beauty of its song. The speaker then reinforces the strength of the bird's calls in the next stanza, stating that "until we hardly see, we feel that it is there." As such, the speaker expresses a deep reverence for the skylark, marveling at its ability to captivate its audience even from great heights. Like God, it doesn't need to be seen directly for it to profoundly affect the human world below.

      In this way, the skylark—and nature in general—might be seen as a bridge between humankind and the divine. In any case, the speaker’s address to the skylark details the splendors of the natural world, suggesting that humankind should recognize and celebrate its wonder and majesty.

    • Theme The Limits of Human Communication

      The Limits of Human Communication

      Throughout the poem, the speaker is awestruck by the skylark, and especially by the purity of its song. The speaker contrasts this purity with the emptiness and insufficiency of human forms of expression. As a poet, the speaker seeks to learn from the joyful skylark, suggesting that the natural world contains truths that conventional forms of human communication—burdened in the poem by sadness and disillusionment—are unable to express.

      The speaker describes the beauty of the skylark’s song as something innate—that is, as something integral to its nature. The bird "pourest [its] full heart / In profuse strains of unpremeditated art," the speaker says, meaning that the skylark's "art" is a spontaneous act that comes naturally to the bird. It is "unpremeditated," rather than carefully planned ahead of time.

      What's more, the birdsong is born out of pure, unadulterated joy. In fact, the skylark is first addressed as "blithe Spirit" and later compared to "an unbodied joy." The skylark is, in fact, completely free of pain—or, as the speaker puts it, "Thou lovest: but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety." The speaker posits that the bird’s "ignorance of pain" has helped to create its beautiful songs. By contrast, even the "sweetest songs" that human beings have produced are stained with suffering and "tell the saddest thought."

      The speaker continues to elevate the bird’s pure, joyous expression over human communication with its many shortcomings. The speaker has "never heard / Praise of love or wine"—typical subjects of human artistic expression—that are as compelling and dignified as the birdsong. Even poetry is no match for the skylark’s calls. To poets, the skylark’s lyric mastery beats "all treasures / That in books are found." In other words, the skylark's song is better than anything human beings have ever written.

      This presents a bit of a problem for the speaker of this poem, of course, who struggles to find adequate means for expressing the bird’s beauty in human terms ("What is most like thee?" the speaker asks). The reader gets the sense that no verse could fully grasp the magnificence of the skylark, and thus feels that human beings—and artists in particular—have much to learn from the bird.

      The speaker even directly calls on the bird as a sort of mentor figure, imploring, "Teach us [...] What sweet thoughts are thine." The speaker closes the poem by asking again, "Teach me half the gladness" that the skylark has known, so that the speaker, too, might share such melodious chaos with the world. The speaker believes that if this is achieved, the world will listen to such verse, just as the speaker listens to the skylark.

      As an artist, the speaker feels kinship with the skylark and believes that the bird can offer unparalleled insight into pure expression—art with the ability to powerfully illuminate truths in the way that human communication, burdened by sadness and artificiality, cannot.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “To a Skylark”

    • Lines 1-5

      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 speaker begins by calling out to the skylark in praise, “hailing” it. The speaker then claims that the skylark was never merely a bird, as its spectacular song originates from the far, divine reaches of the sky.

      The speaker’s early language choices suggest that nature contains great spiritual power. The skylark itself is called “Spirit,” and the speaker refers to the upper portions of the sky as “Heaven.” Both of these words are capitalized, which draws the reader’s attention to them while also recalling the capitalization of pronouns related to divine beings in religious texts. The formality of the speaker’s language, including the use of “thy,” helps to elevate the skylark.

      The speaker’s initial characterization of the skylark also highlights its emotions. The bird is “blithe,” or happy and without a care. The speaker states that the birdsong is an outpouring of the skylark’s “full heart,” suggesting passion. Moreover, the speaker accentuates the aesthetic impact of the bird's song by likening it to “strains” (the sound of music being performed) and “art.”

      This stanza—and especially the last two lines—features chains of interlocking consonance:

      Pourest thy full heart
      In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

      The dense groupings of /p/, /r/, /t/, and /s/ sounds reflect the skillful intricacy of the birdsong. In line 2, consonance and assonance combine to create slant rhymes (“Bird thou never wert”), drawing the reader’s attention to the otherworldly power of the skylark’s calls and increasing the poem’s musicality.

      This stanza also establishes the poem’s song-like form. In particular, each stanza contains four lines of trochaic trimeter (six syllables in an alternating stressed-unstressed pattern) followed by one longer line of iambic hexameter (twelve syllables in an unstressed-stressed pattern). The fact that most lines begin on a stressed beat gives the speaker’s address to the skylark an insistent, passionate feel. The rhythm might be said to reflect the bird’s flight—quickly flapping its wings before coasting along—or the lilts of its song. The poem also features an ABABB rhyme scheme that enhances the atmosphere of harmony and beauty.

      Finally, the speaker directly addresses the skylark, who cannot respond—a technique known as apostrophe. As such, the audience witnesses a personal exchange, in which the speaker’s passions are aimed at their source. In this way, apostrophe heightens the poem’s emotional stakes. The use of the second person (in this case, “thee”) also gives the impression that the speaker is addressing the audience, building intimacy between the speaker and the reader. At the same time, apostrophe puts the audience in the bird’s place, subtly inviting the reader to identify with the bird. In short, the directness of the speaker’s pleas places the audience in the crosshairs of an emotional exchange.

    • Lines 6-10

      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.

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    • Lines 11-15

      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.

    • Lines 16-20

      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,

    • Lines 21-25

      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.

    • Lines 26-30

      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.

    • Lines 31-35

      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.

    • Lines 36-40

      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:

    • Lines 41-45

      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:

    • Lines 46-50

      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:

    • Lines 51-55

      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:

    • Lines 56-60

      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.

    • Lines 61-65

      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.

    • Lines 66-70

      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.

    • Lines 71-75

      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?

    • Lines 76-80

      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.

    • Lines 81-85

      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?

    • Lines 86-90

      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.

    • Lines 91-95

      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.

    • Lines 96-100

      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!

    • Lines 101-105

      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.

  • “To a Skylark” Symbols

    • Symbol The Skylark

      The Skylark

      Much of "To a Skylark" is spent describing the delights of the bird's song, which is characterized as piercing, heavenly, and beautiful. Through such descriptions, the skylark becomes a symbol of unmitigated joy, freedom, and spiritual fulfillment—things that are out of reach for human beings, the poem implies, who instead remain forever weighed down by sadness and pain.

      The bird soars through the air, its "music" better than "All that ever was / Joyous, and clear, and fresh." Unlike people, the bird is "ignoran[t] of pain" and "ne'er knew love's sad satiety." It represents a state of total bliss that human beings will never "come near," because to be human is to feel "Hate, and pride, and fear."

      The speaker wants to learn from the bird, because the speaker longs to experience the happiness and seeming spiritual fulfillment that the skylark represents. The bird is also closely linked to divinity, soaring as it does through "Heaven" throughout the poem. Alas, the disappointments that are implied to be inherent to human life prevent the speaker, and everyone else, from ever being like the skylark. Its joyous spirit will forever remain mysterious.

      Also note how the speaker searches and searches for an appropriate comparison for the bird but finds none. The speaker contrasts the purity of the skylark’s calls, which are spontaneous and unburdened by pain, with the limits of human communication. As such, the birdsong can also be seen as symbolic of nature's purity of expression—that is, of the perfection of natural communication and art.

    • Symbol Light and the Sky

      Light and the Sky

      Both light and the sky in the poem represent spiritual insight and knowledge. From the speaker's very first mention of the sky, it is depicted as celestial—called "Heaven," immediately linking the sky with divinity. The speaker also depicts many natural objects and forces that exist within the sky, such as stars and weather, as magnificent and ethereal. For instance, the moon becomes "that silver sphere" that "rains out her beams and Heaven is overflow’d."

      The speaker reinforces the association between the sky and divinity through images of light and illumination, which are often associated with spiritual insight in literature. For example, the skylark soars "in the golden lightning / Of the sunken sun, / O'er which clouds are bright'ning."

      The skylark itself is, of course, intimately connected with the sky because this is where the bird flies, far above the human world below. All this imagery implies that the bird gets its artistic inspiration, its pure joy and fulfillment, from its connection with a sort of divine realm beyond human understanding.

    • Symbol Water, Rain, and Floods

      Water, Rain, and Floods

      The speaker repeatedly uses water-related imagery to describe the power of the skylark's song. It's a "flood of rapture," "a rain of melody," and "a crystal stream," for example. Through this imagery, water comes to represent many things, including intense, overwhelming emotion; artistic inspiration; and the communication of that emotion and inspiration.

      The idea of water as a symbol of inspiration is perhaps the clearest in the poem. Think of how the speaker's asks the bird about the "fountains" of its melodies, meaning the source of its song. Water also gets symbolically linked to art itself (specifically music), given that the skylark's song is repeatedly likened to a shower of rain onto the earth. Rain, of course, comes from the sky—a symbol of divinity and spiritual insight in the poem—and this imagery suggests that the bird is bringing pure truth and beauty down into the human realm.

      Other things in the poem are linked to water as well, and specifically flooding: the "moon rains out her beams," for example, until the sky itself "is overflow'd" with light, and the "maiden's" lovely music "overflows her bower." Spring showers liven up "flowers," too. According to the speaker, the skylark's song surpasses all these things, but they are nevertheless linked with inspiration and insight in their own right.

  • “To a Skylark” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Anaphora

      "To a Skylark" contains several examples of anaphora. The most prominent use of this device begins in line 36, when the speaker uses the phrase "Like a" to introduce a series of similes that describe the skylark and its calls.

      The bird is likened to a poet, an aristocratic young woman, an insect, and a flower. The repeated phrase links these figures and objects, which at first seem to have little in common. In doing so, anaphora highlights the interconnectedness of all living things.

      By inviting the audience to compare these various images, their similarities come into focus. In particular, each simile describes a plant or creature that is hidden away and has some beautiful natural gift, which it distributes throughout its environment. The use of anaphora creates a unified representation of all the skylark's skills, which are showered onto the earth although the bird is high in the sky, shielded from view.

      In lines 71-75, the speaker again uses anaphora while asking the skylark a series of questions about the inspiration behind its song, repeating "What [...]?" The speaker's inquiries are literally stacked on top of one another, creating the impression of a "pile-up" of questions. In this way, anaphora displays how overcome with bewilderment the speaker is in the face of the powerful birdsong. The repetition of "what" also places insistence or urgency behind the speaker's pleas, allowing the audience to feel the speaker's intense desire to learn from the bird.

      The last two instances of anaphora generally serve to differentiate the bird's calls from human forms of communication. Lines 88-90 describe how even "our sincerest laughter" and "our sweetest songs" are stained with suffering. The repetition of the collective pronoun "our" emphasizes that these flaws are not unique to the speaker, but rather, they burden all human communications.

      Finally, in lines 96-99, the speaker claims that, to poets, the birdsong is greater than any other sound or text. Here, the repetition of the phrase "better than all" drives home the speaker's point that the skylark's song transcends all human communication, even that composed by the most trained ear.

      In general, anaphora also accentuates the regularity of the poem's meter, as the repetition of a word or phrase yields a repeating stress pattern. In this way, anaphora contributes to the poem's harmonious, song-like feel, in turn highlighting the beauty of the skylark's calls.

    • Apostrophe

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    • Assonance

    • Consonance

    • Imagery

    • Metaphor

    • Personification

    • Repetition

    • Rhetorical Question

    • Simile

  • “To a Skylark” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Skylark
    • Hail
    • Blithe
    • Profuse
    • Strains
    • Unpremeditated
    • Unbodied
    • Shrill
    • Keen
    • Silver sphere
    • Narrow
    • Unbidden
    • Wrought
    • Heeded
    • Maiden
    • Love-laden
    • Bower
    • Glow-worm
    • Dell
    • Unbeholden
    • Aëreal
    • Embower'd
    • Deflower'd
    • Vernal
    • Surpass
    • Sprite
    • Rapture
    • Hymeneal
    • Vaunt
    • Plain
    • Ignorance
    • Joyance
    • Langour
    • Satiety
    • Deem
    • Pine (for)
    • Fraught
    • Scorn
    • Measure
    Skylark

    • A small, brown songbird commonly found in Asia, North Africa, and Europe. The skylark is known for its full, complex song, which the bird can sustain for long periods, even while flying. For this reason, the skylark is often identified by its distinctive calls before it is seen.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “To a Skylark”

    • Form

      Shelley developed a unique structure to suit the distinctive birdsong that the poem describes. The poem's 105 lines are arranged into 21 cinquains, or stanzas containing five lines. Each stanza also consists of four shorter lines followed by a significantly longer fifth line.

      The length of the final line—about double that of the preceding four—prevents the poem from becoming too monotonous, while also evoking the natural variations or lilts in both the skylark’s song and its flight. At the same time, the fact that the poem never deviates from this format (it is consistent in its inconsistency) is another possible testament to the persistence of the skylark's song.

      "To a Skylark" is also an ode, an elaborate poem that celebrates or praises something—in this case, the skylark. The ode is a very old form that dates all the way back to ancient Greece, and it was popular with Romantic poets like Shelley because it connected their work to a long, storied literary tradition. The fact that this poem is an ode implicitly elevates the subject at hand; the humble skylark becomes something magnificent and worth celebrating.

    • Meter

      "To a Skylark" utilizes two different meters. The first four lines of each stanza are written in trochaic trimeter, meaning there are three trochees (poetic feet with a stressed-unstressed syllable pattern; DUM-da) per line. This gives the poem a very energetic, forceful feel. As an example, take lines 36-39:

      Like a | Poet | hidden
      In the | light of | thought,
      Singing | hymns un- | bidden,
      Till the | world is | wrought

      As these lines show, the poem's trochaic trimeter lines are often catalectic—a fancy-sounding word that simply means that a line is missing its final syllable (as with "thought" and "wrought" above, which lack the unstressed beat to make the trochees complete). This adds yet more energy and excitement; the speaker can hardly wait to get to the next line in praise of the skylark.

      The meter of the first four lines in each stanza thus places force and emphasis behind the speaker’s statements, allowing the audience to feel the passion behind the speaker’s praise of the bird as well as the urgency of the speaker’s desire to learn from the skylark.

      The last line of each stanza is then written in iambic hexameter—a meter of six iambs, or da-DUMs (an iamb is essentially the opposite of a trochee). As such, these final lines begin with unstressed syllables and are about twice the length of the preceding lines. For instance, here is a look at the meter of line 25:

      Until | we hard- | ly see, | we feel | that it | is there.

      While the shorter lines are choppy and exciting, the longer lines allow rhythmic momentum to gradually build, culminating in a stress. This steady "rising" effect of the iamb might be said to reflect the bird's ascent into the sky.

      Whatever the case, the regular meter contributes to the poem's song-like feel, which in turn accentuates the musical quality of the skylark's call. Indeed, like the poem's meter, the skylark's voice is sustained and dynamic—repetitive enough to be enchanting, but never monotonous. The poem’s rhythm is consistent but the stress pattern is not rigid, reflecting the constant changes of the skylark's song.

      Plus, because so much of the text is distinctly "poetic" in terms of sound and language (inverted word order, lengthy descriptions, use of rhyme, etc.), the deviations from the standard meter preserve some sense of being conversational, as the speaker is, after all, meant to be talking to the bird. Still, Shelley sought to maintain a relatively consistent cadence, evidenced by the removal of vowels ("O'er which clouds are bright'ning"), presumably so that the audience might appreciate the musicality of the birdsong.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      “To a Skylark” features a simple and consistent rhyme scheme. The first and third lines within each stanza rhyme, as do the second, fourth, and fifth lines, creating the pattern:

      ABABB

      Most of the poem’s lines are quite short, making these end rhymes all the more prominent and densely packed. The poem feels intensely musical as a result, which reflects the beauty and harmony of nature as well as the delightful song-like quality of the skylark’s calls. Other forms of sound play such as assonance and consonance heighten this effect (check out the "Poetic Devices" section of this guide for more on these).

      Most of the rhymes within this poem are perfect, but this isn’t always the case. For instance, lines 66-70, which describe the flaws of music created by humans, contain slant rhymes such as “Hymeneal” with “all” and “chant” with “want.” Here, the imperfect rhymes call attention to the insufficiencies of human forms of expression, which pale in comparison to the purity of the birdsong. In general, slant rhymes highlight the speaker’s inability to fully capture the skylark’s beauty and skill.

  • “To a Skylark” Speaker

    • The speaker of this poem is left anonymous—an unnamed commentator who hears the calls of a skylark and stops to contemplate the incomparable beauty and power of its song. The speaker being nonspecific makes sense, in that this helps to keep the poem's focus squarely on the skylark.

      Both the splendor of the skylark’s song and the speaker’s struggles to fully capture the bird’s artistry in the poem act as reminders of the speaker’s own limitations as a human being. In turn, the encounter with the skylark reinforces the speaker’s view that human forms of expression are flawed. This is not to say that the speaker passively accepts the limitations of human communication. Instead, the speaker wishes to learn from the skylark, directly asking the bird to "teach us."

      The address to the skylark contains references to art, music, and literature, suggesting that the speaker is an artist of some kind. Indeed, the speaker wishes to replicate the birdsong in order to effect change in society, or at least be heard.

      Shelley’s reverence for the natural world, appreciation of its spiritual power, and belief that (proper) artists convey essential truths to humankind are all qualities he shares with the speaker. Moreover, Shelley wrote this poem after hearing the calls of a skylark, so it's reasonable to conclude that the poem’s speaker is very close to its author. Still, the speaker’s concerns have been shared by many intellectuals and creatives throughout history, so the speaker can also be thought of as some more generalized stand-in for artists and their plight.

  • “To a Skylark” Setting

    • The poem has a nonspecific setting. It is unclear at what point in history the poem’s events are meant to take place, and their physical location is similarly indistinct. Skylarks can be observed across Asia, Europe, and North Africa, but beyond that, the audience only knows that the poem’s events take place outdoors, likely at sunset. Still, the speaker spends much of the poem fondly describing the scenery, showing a great appreciation for everyday natural occurrences such as the movement of the planets.

      Repeatedly referred to as “Heaven,” the sky becomes a symbol of spirituality, while the earth, to which the speaker is confined, represents the lesser, human realm of nature. The skylark bridges the two, and the wider setting thus captures the distance between humans and the divine, as well as nature’s ability to bring them closer.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “To a Skylark”

      Literary Context

      "To a Skylark" was published in 1820, just two years before Shelley’s tragic death by drowning. It appeared with Prometheus Unbound, Shelley’s lyrical drama (a play written in verse) about the mythological titan Prometheus Many of Shelley's greatest poems also appeared alongside this drama, including "Ode to the West Wind," "The Cloud," and "Ozymandias."

      These works all feature vivid imagery and focus, at least in part, on the spiritual power and mystery of the natural world. In fact, these features can be observed across Shelley's writing. "To a Skylark" encapsulates other Shelley-esque stylistic features as well, such as his use of symbolism, imagery, exclamatory statements, questions, and other highly emotive language. His work also often features an interplay of joy and despair as well as tension between the all-important role of the poet and the limitations of language.

      Together with William Blake ("The Sick Rose"), Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("The Eolian Harp"), William Wordsworth ("I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"), Lord Byron ("Prometheus"), and John Keats ("Ode to a Nightingale"), Shelley has become almost synonymous with the British Romantic movement. The Romantics were known for their glorification of nature, whose awe-inspiring beauty was said to bring about deep introspection. The ode was also popular among the Romantics, as it elevates and praises its subject, often through an emotional direct address (as in "To a Skylark").

      Shelley's "To a Skylark" was preceded and influenced by Wordsworth's "To the Skylark," which also features a direct address to the bird. Like Shelley, Wordsworth uses rhetorical questions, compares the birdsong to a "flood," and posits that the bird disdains the earth, which is full of human worry. English writer (and Shelley acolyte) Thomas Hardy ("The Darkling Thrush") composed "Shelley's Skylark" in the late 19th century while on a trip to Italy. Hardy’s poem imagines what has come of the skylark that Shelley describes, using its immortalization (in verse) to express his own devotion to Shelley.

      Historical Context

      Shelley wrote "To a Skylark" while living in Italy with his wife, writer Mary Shelley. During an evening walk through the port city of Livorno, they heard the calls of the skylark, which inspired the poem. Mary Shelley recounted the incident nearly two decades later:

      It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the caroling of the sky-lark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems.

      Shelley was writing during the Romantic era, the transition to which occurred alongside a string of cultural, economic, and political upheavals across Europe. While the Age of Enlightenment championed logic and reason above all else, the Romantic era saw an increased focus on mystery, doubt, and speculation, as well as the elevation of individual expression, subjectivity, and imagination. Meanwhile, rapid industrialization reshaped landscapes, working and living conditions, and the way people interacted with one another.

      The Romantics were generally sympathetic to radical, revolutionary politics and had an anti-elitist worldview (at least during their younger years), and Shelley was no exception. A life-long rebel, Shelley was nicknamed "Mad Shelley" as a child and his atheistic writings ultimately got him kicked out of Oxford University. Shelley was personally much more interested in individual spirituality (and its connection to the natural world) than institutionalized religion, which he found tyrannical and hypocritical. Despite the ire they were met with, Shelley continued to produce political pamphlets throughout his later years.

      In general, Shelley was strong-minded in his literary output, resisting the influence of sales and critics (who were often harshly negative and commented on his perceived moral depravity). Indeed, Shelley believed that poetry was the most powerful and effective companion to social change. For instance, the Peterloo Massacre occurred the year before this poem was written. The incident greatly troubled Shelley, who addressed it in both lyrics and prose. However, many of his political poems of this period were too dangerous to be published at the time. Nature poems such as "To a Skylark" allowed Shelley to promote his worldview in a subtler and safer format.

  • More “To a Skylark” Resources

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