Adhikari 1

Milan Adhikari

Section 'A'

Mr. Yadab Prasad Adhikari

ENGL. 554.1

11 October 2020

Representation of Imaginative Spirit and Man and Natural World in "To a Skylark"

This paper presents a thematic analysis regarding the representation of imaginative spirit and

depiction of man vs natural world in P.B. Shelley's poem "To a Skylark". Percy Bysshe

Shelly literary name P.B Shelly (1792 -1822), one of the major English romantic poets, tends

to invoke natures as a sort of supreme metaphor for beauty, creativity and expression in this

poem. In the poem, poet addresses a Skylark (a spirit) bird that soars up a great height and

sings so sweetly the world is enchanted and fascinated by its sweetness which symbolizes

high imagination and eternal happiness. This thematic analysis is helpful in understanding the

thematic and creative impulse of PB Shelley's poetry and his reviews and treatment of nature

and beauty. This term paper aims to excavate the presence of imagination in Percy Bysshe

Shelley's poem "To a Skylark". Here researcher will elaborate more and go deep into the

work of art created by the great poet Shelly. On the one hand Shelley in "To a Skylark"

addresses to a skylark (a little bird) that soars up at a great height and sings so sweetly that

the world is enchanted and bewitched by its sweetness. Which symbolize the high

imagination, eternal happiness and harbinger of peace and progress. With that spirit Shelley

goes on expressing his sublime imagination which we will look more into. So here researcher

will go through the caves of imagination which was explored by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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Imagination is the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to

the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality. In the poem, poet presents nature as a

realm of overwhelming beauty and aesthetic pleasure which means nature as a realm of

communion with pure existence of a truth. This poem is an ode to a skylark. It is a lyrical

poem where the poet has elevated beauty and sweetness of a skylark and the song it sings.

The bird embodies both the purity and simplicity of nature. In the poem, Shelley praises the

skylark for its beauty and its exquisite song. He concedes that human nature prevents him

from expressing such joy and asks the skylark to teach him gladness. The skylark flies into

the sky singing happily. As it flies upward, the clouds of evening make it unseen, but the poet

still hears its song which filled both the earth and air. The poet compares thin visible skylark

to a poet.

The poet says that the songs sung in praise of love or wine or music played for a

wedding or a celebration cannot be compared to the loveliness of the skylark's song. The poet

wonders about the causes of the skylark's happiness and he came up with the conclusion that

the skylark is free from all that gives pain to man. It knows what lies beyond death and has no

fear. Even if man freed himself from hate, pride, and fear, man's joy would not equal the

skylark. The secret of its capacity to sing so happily would be an incomparable gift for the

poet. If the skylark could communicate to Shelley half its happiness, then he would write

poetry that the world would read as joyfully ashes is listening to the song of the bird. Shelley

calls the bird a 'Spirit' because it is rarely visible and only its melodious song is heard by the

people. The sweet song of the skylark reveals to Shelley that unlike ordinary mortals it is

absolutely carefree. The skylark symbolizes the free soul.

Shelley's ode "To a Skylark" discusses several important themes that dominated the

romantic period. In this poem it is evident that Shelley exposes a great adoration for the

beauty of nature, and he feels intimately connected to nature‘s power. The poem reflects
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Shelley's desire to know the secrets of nature, to know how birds feel when they sing.

Because there is a contact gap between mankind and the world, the poet is enchanted by all

the ways in which human beings interact with the natural world. There is a glamorous

relationship between the bird and nature which creates fabulous feeling in the sky. "To a

Skylark" conveys the limitations of art, and the impossibility of our songs or poems ever

measuring up to the beauty that is all around us. Shelley compares the song of the bird with

human creativity to find at the end the second sadly wanting. This comparison between

Shelley's own writing and the skylark and its song is one of the key ideas in To a Skylark.

Repeatedly, the speaker imagines the skylark as a kind of natural artist, and thinks of his own

work as being like the bird's song. The inefficiency of human poetry not only expresses its

general failure to match the expressiveness of the bird, but also marks the failure of this

particular poem to achieve its object. Throughout the lyric, the poet feels things really deeply.

Shelley establishes sadness as the necessary condition for joy, concern with the sadness of To

a Skylark does not make it a less joyous poem.

The sadness that the poet feels is a general and normal sadness that fills all of human

life. It's never the prevailing theme in "To a Skylark." Shelley mentions sadness only when he

talks about human beings and their feelings, but this is not the case when he mentions nature

because nature itself doesn't feel that same sadness. The skylark in "To a Skylark" is a

creature of pure joy. It inspires Shelley to feel agitated, delightful joy that has no part of pain

or suffering. The bird doesn't know anything about feeling old or tired or lonely. It is full of

"delight" all the time, and its song is an expression of that happiness. Unlike people, it doesn't

have to think about the past or the future, or lost love, or any of the other things that make us

miserable. Pure awe and amazement run through "To a Skylark." the speaker is just so alive

to everything around him. He's so fascinated by feelings and images and sounds that he can

barely hold it. Shelley, the revolutionist, envies the skylark for its boundless freedom to roam
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the skies. Unnoticed and Unappreciated Poetry: Shelley believed his poetry like the song of

the skylark deserved attention. Shelley's poetry, as the song of the bird, also soars, but he is

not sure whether the public pays much notice to it.

Harold Bloom has described "To a Skylark" as Shelley’s “farewell to the theme of the

power hidden behind nature and the poet's relation to that power” (Bloom, 87). In this ode,

Shelley attempts to identify the essence of that powerful force that gives human beings such

feelings of joy and excitement when they confront the natural world directly. The unseen bird

whose song prompts the poet to engage in a rhapsody of comparison stands metaphor for

nature, and Shelley’s vain attempts to find a way to make the power of the natural world

seem intelligible suggest the general inability of humanity to comprehend the forces outside

itself. In this sense, the forces of nature can be equated to the imagination, which for the

Romantics is a kind of divine power that invests them with special insight.

Easily lost in the extensive list of comparisons in this poem is the central contrast that

Shelley makes between the simple, freewheeling joy found in nature and the complex,

paradoxical joy that humans feel, a joy bound up with desire and tragedy. Shelley makes this

point clear in the eighteenth stanza when he describes the way people seem to view the

world: "We look before and after" (86), he observes, thinking of the human tendency to dwell

on the past and the future rather than the present. Humanity’s “sincerest laughter” is always

“fraught” with some form of pain (88-89), and its “sweetest songs” are those “that tell of

saddest thought” (90). Shelley suggests that the suffering humanity undergoes gives it the

opportunity to understand the kind of joy the skylark represents. “If we were things born/ Not

to shed a tear” he observes, “I know not how thy joy we ever could come near” (93-95).

Unlike the bird, humans define their essence their humanity through suffering as well as

through joy. Nevertheless, being able to comprehend the joy the bird represents is important

to the poet, for he believes that, should he be able to translate this joy into words, he would be
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able to help make life better for those who would read his poetry. Were he to learn “half the

gladness” (101) that characterizes the skylark’s life in nature, “Such harmonious

madness/from my lips would pour” (103-104) that he could transform the world. Such,

Shelley believes, is the high calling of the poet.

To a Skylark, Shelley symbolizes the Skylark as blithe spirit. He compares the skylark

to several things; the skylark is compared to a poet composing, a maiden in love, a glow-

worm throwing out its beams of light, a rose in bloom diffusing its scent, and the sound of

rain on twinkling grass. Shelley finds the Skylark as the embodiment of all these qualities

which can never be found in a single human being. Human beings also sing songs in praise of

love to celebrate a wedding or a victory but compared with the Skylark's singing, all human

songs would seem to be meaningless. Shelley makes the bird Skylark symbol of pure,

unalloyed and unrestricted.

To a Skylark is one of the greatest works of all time. The theme of the poem is

fulfillment and through the richness of images, the poet has prolonged its fulfillment. It is

most satisfying in thought and expression. As researcher is about to conclude this writing,

researcher must state that P. B Shelly inspired by nature presents the imaginative faculty on

deep and soothing tone. Shelly uses the excellent imagery, literary devices, and wonderful

writing skill to depict the man and natural world by the means of skylark which becomes the

symbol of the purest, most joyful and most inspire creative impulse. Shelly asks the bird for

insight to his eternal bliss and superior knowledge, that he may tell the world of it. Then,

Shelly explains a fault in man, using the "things more true and deep" (83) that the skylark

has. Finally, Shelly praises the skylark again, and pleads that it teaches him some of its

gladness, that he may pass it on to humanity. This poem shows that Shelley possesses all the

romantic traits love of nature, beauty and imagination along with men and natural world.
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Works Cited

Ferguson, Margaret. Jo Salter, Mary. Stallworthy, Jon. eds. The Norton anthology of poetry.

WW Norton & Co. 2005. Print.

Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Texas State

University, 1971. p. 87

Marjarum, E. Wayne. "The Symbolism of Shelley's 'To a Skylark"." Modern Language

Association, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1937), pp. 911-913.

Richards, Irving T. "A Note on Source Influences in Shelley's Cloud and Skylark," PMLA,

Vol. 50, No. 2 (June, 1935), pp. 562-567.

Sandy, Mark. "To a Skylark". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 9 January 2006.