To A Skylark (P. B. Shelley)

To A Skylark (P. B. Shelley)

The poem is one of the lyrics in English language. Wordsworth speaks of it as the “expression of the highest to which the poet’s genius attained”. It illustrates some of the most salient features of Shelley’s poetry : his soaring idealism, intensity of feeling, vividness of colouring, splendour of imagery and incomparable sweetness of melody. The lyric is inspired by the song of a skylark that the poet had heard in a summer evening. The song of the bird stirred the mind of’the poet to its depths. From the start he idealises it as the creature of flesh and blood and treats it as an invisible song, an unbodied joy. Shelley’s imagination could never conceive of the bird as creature of flesh, a thing subject to death and decay. To him the bird is the archetype of the beauty and joy that have been the two eternal principles of the universe. The upward flight of the bird is a symbol of the poet’s unbounded inspiration. It is Shelley’s very self that is projected into the bird that he celebrates, May the bird is something more than that. It is a type of the mystic philosopher, having an intuitive perception of the mysteries of life and death which is denied to a man on earth. Hence the sweetness of its song, proceeding from a clarity of thought. Thus Shelley has idealised the bird by the intensity of his imagination. It may not be possible for all to see eye to eye with the poet, so far as his idealisation of the bird is concerned. But the purely poetic beauties of the lyric are irresistible. The splendid images in which Shelley describes the bird, a poet, high born maiden, etc. have a rich colouring and apt suggestiveness which have hardly any parallel in English poetry. Indeed, as Courthope has observed, “If greatness in poetry consisted of a succession of dazzling images and a rapid flow of splendid verse, Shelley would be entitled to almost the very first place in English literature”. These images take away the breath of the reader as he tries to grapple with them. The moment we are able to fasten on the beauty of image, the poet takes us to another which is lovelier than the former one. The freshness and delicacy of the images are startling and impressive. Lastly, in musical quality the poem is superb. Like the song it celebrates, the poem in a grain of melody, a veritable jet of song. Words and phrases seem to drop out of the poet’s lips with the perfect ease and charm of the bird’s song. The rhythmic beat of the four short verses followed by a long Alexandrine seems to echo the very throb of the bird’s wings in the pure region of the air. No other poet than Shelley has been able to write such admirable flowing verse with so much ease and spontaneity.
It is, indeed, a wonderful poem. Its painting measures seem to give us the very beats of those quivering wings. As a bird poem, it occupies a supreme place in literature. Few poets have been able to bring about such a wonderful fusion between the spirit of the poet and the spirit of the bird. The lark mounts in profuse strains of an art so facile that it may well seem unpremeditated. It soars till earth is lost sign of a very cloud of fire, beautiful but impalpable, floating and running ‘like an unbodied joy’. There is an indescribable curve of beauty coming out of its flight for an indefinite world, a territory of dissuggestions and fugitive thrill. Its wings throb with the poet’s thirst for eternal beauty. Hence the poem is thoroughly romantic in quest for the unknown, in its quest for the unknown in its efforts to escape the sordid facts of life.
The lyric throws interesting side-lights upon the characteristics of Shelley. It is speaking picture. Every line of it reflects the man behind the pen, and the bird is simply the expression of the poet himself. The poet, his thought, his love for ideal beauty, his melancholy all find a mirror in this poem. The poet envies the great happiness of the skylark, because his personal life is unhappy
Teach me half the gladness,
That thy brain must know.
To sum up, it is a unique poem marked with striking luminousness. The movement of the verse, depth of imagination, beauty of expression-all have combined to make it a memorable song for all ages to come. It awakens the active power of imagination, clothes itself in radiant imagery and rises into the completeness and sustained melody of the highest lyrical order.

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