To a Skylark Questions and Answers
To a Skylark
What is the theme of the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley?
The theme of Percy Bysshe Shelley's lyrical ode "To a Skylark" is the power of nature to inspire and delight the human spirit. While the poet listens to the small night bird sing with delight as it...
To a Skylark
What does "our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought" mean in "To a Skylark" by P.B. Shelley?
The line you are referring to is more easily understood in the context of the full stanza. We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;...
To a Skylark
Why is the skylark called a pilgrim of the sky?
A pilgrim is a traveler on a spiritual journey. In the first line of this ode, Wordsworth's speaker addresses the skylark as follows: Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! An ethereal minstrel...
To a Skylark
In the last stanza of "To a Skylark," the speaker refers to "harmonious madness." What does...
The poem contains the phrase "harmonious madness" referring to the beauty of the song of the skylark. The persona feels that if he had half the gladness within himself that the skylark...
To a Skylark
In Shelley's poem "To a Skylark," how does the author contrast the life of the bird and the man?
The skylark isn't just presented by Shelley as a beautiful bird that sings sweetly. Its closeness to nature means that it can teach man how to recover that intimate connection to the natural world...
To a Skylark
Explain the 2nd stanza of the poem "To The Skylark" by William Wordsworth, aided by literary techniques. The 2nd...
In the line before this, Wordsworth mentions the bird singing a "love-prompted strain". He is probably referring to love that the skylark has for its nest and babies, since he refers to...
To a Skylark
What are the qualities that the speaker idealizes in the skylark in “To a Skylark”?
In his poem “To a Skylark,” Percy Bysshe Shelley offers a speaker who directs their comments to the bird itself. Overall, the poem compares the natural talents of a bird to the strained or...
To a Skylark
What does the skylark symbolise in Shelley's "To A Skylark"?
The inspiration for the famous poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Shelley came while Shelley was taking a walk in the Italian countryside with his wife, Mary Shelley. They heard the lovely melody of a...
To a Skylark
Explain the symbolism of "To a Skylark" by Shelley.
The European skylark sings only when in flight. When the speaker of the poem starts praising the bird, it is already out of his sight. So, the speaker only hears the bird, giving it a spiritual...
To a Skylark
Please identify figures of speech in Percy Byshee Shelley's poem "To a Skylark."
A representative examination of the first three stanzas of "To a Skylark" by Percy Byshee Shelley shows that the poem has an abundance of figures of speech. Figures of speech come in many forms and...
To a Skylark
Contrast the skylark's happiness with the life of man on earth in "To a Skylark."
The speaker in Shelley's poem hears nothing but joy reflected in the skylark's song. He contrasts that to human emotions, which are colored by pain, and human music in which the sweetest songs are...
To a Skylark
What is the central message of the poem "To a Skylark"?
The author expresses the transcendance of nature, depicted by the skylark's flight (symbol of freedom) and its song (symbol of both joy and its transmission to others). This is a common leit motif...
To a Skylark
Please give some similes in "To a Skylark" by Shelley.
There are quite a few examples to choose from in this memorable poem. I will pick out some of the similes from the beginning of the poem and hopefully this will enable you to see how it is done so...
To a Skylark
What is the inner meaning of the lines "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thoughts" written by...
Like many of the great Romantic poems, "To a Skylark" possesses a remarkable coherence, by which we mean that all of its parts relate to the whole. One can take a single line, such as this one, and...
To a Skylark
Why does the poet feel that the skylark is lucky? What effect does the song have on the traveller in the poem, "To a...
The traveler is overjoyed and understands that the song of this bird is a combination of nature and poetry, and this is a secret that could change the world as a whole. He believes that the power...
To a Skylark
How does the author contrast the life of the bird and the man in the poem "To a Skylark"?
In "To a Skylark," Percy Bysshe Shelley sets up a stark contrast between the life of a bird and the life of mankind. For the first half of the poem, the narrator focuses on the skylark itself,...
To a Skylark
"Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught."Explain this line from Shelley's "To A Skylark."
Shelley is comparing the skylark's experience of joy to the way humans experience joy. Shelley imagines that the skylark is a spiritual being. The bird sings only while flying and flies so high...
To a Skylark
Explain how Percy Bysshe Shelley relates the skylark's song to his own efforts to write poetry in "To a Skylark."
Shelley asks the question: what thing in the world is most like the skylark? He has been praising, for several stanzas, the beauty of the skylark and its song, whose melody seems to come from...
To a Skylark
What do the lines "sound of vernal showers/On the twinkling grass/Rain-awaken'd flowers,/All that ever was/joyous,...
In this poem, the narrator is expressing the intense joy the song of the skylark gives him. It is very typical of a Romantic poet to express both love of nature and personal emotion in verse, which...
To a Skylark
Compare and contrast Shelley and Wordsworth with reference to the poems "To a Skylark" and "To the Skylark".
In the poems "To a Skylark" and "To the Skylark" by Wordsworth and Shelley, both poets see the skylark as something spiritual or celestial. Wordsworth begins calls the skylark an "ethereal...
To a Skylark
What are the ideas/images in 'To a Skylark' (by Percy Bysshe Shelley) that contrast human limitations and the...
Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" offers many different images and ideas with which one could contrast human limitations to the perception the poet offers of the skylark. To begin, the...
To a Skylark
In "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, how are our songs different from those of a skylark?
Basically, the skylark's songs are happier than ours. The speaker opens the poem by calling the skylark a "blithe Spirit," and spends a great deal of the poem describing the pure happiness that the...
To a Skylark
What does the poet ask the bird to teach him in "To a Skylark"?
Shelley spends about the first third of "To a Skylark" praising the bird, saying it is "from Heaven" and "Like an unbodied joy." The skylark is depicted as perfect and otherworldly. Eventually, the...
To a Skylark
How does shelley personify the skylark in his poem "Tto a Skylark"?
One way in which Shelley personifies the skylark in the poem "To a Skylark" is to compare the bird to characters within the poem, like a "poet hidden" and a "high born maiden;" through his use of...
To a Skylark
In the lines "Like a star of heaven / In the broad daylight" from Shelley's "To a Sky-Lark," what is being compared...
In the first stanza, the speaker hears the skylark singing. In the second stanza, the skylark flies "Higher still and higher" singing as it flies higher into the sky. The bird continues its ascent...
To a Skylark
Comment on Shelley's view of the skylark's song in "To A Skylark."
Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to a Skylark" addresses the skylark as "blithe spirit" and declares that the skylark itself could never really have been a bird, but it is a creature which, from...
To a Skylark
Does the speaker's mood change as the poem continues? If so, where?
The first six stanzas are a celebration of the beauty of the skylark's song and the freedom of its flight. The skylark sings only when flying, and the bird is flying so high that the speaker can no...
To a Skylark
What would be a critical appreciation of "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley?
"To a Skylark" is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in June 1820. It consists of twenty-one five-line stanzas. The stanzas each consist of four lines of iambic trimeter followed by a line of...
To a Skylark
Summarize "To A Skylark" by William Wordsworth, highlighting the good and bad points of the poem. UP with...
"To a Skylark" describes the sight and sound of a bird singing. From that immediate description, the narrator moves on to reflecting on the role of nature in humanity's life, and how it...
To a Skylark
In stanzas 4 to 7, 10, and 11 of "To a Skylark," to what is the bird and its song compared?
In stanza four of "To a Skylark," Shelley compares the skylark to a star in the sky in daylight. The star is there, but in the daytime, we can not see it. The skylark often sings in flight and at...
To a Skylark
What request does the poet make of a skylark?
As the speaker listens to the sweet strains of the nightingale's song, he wonders what in nature is most like a nightingale, comparing the bird to a rainbow, a poet, a glow worm, a rose, and the...
To a Skylark
Do you consider Shelley's imagery to be "ethereal"? Discuss with special reference to "To a Skylark."
When we use the word ethereal we normally refer to an other-worldly nature, that is not quite part of our realm of experience. In this poem we can definitely see the way in which Shelley's...
To a Skylark
In Shelley's "To a Skylark," what effects does the rhyme scheme have?
This is an interesting question, and one that will require some interpretation! All we can say for absolute certain is that the rhyme scheme in Shelley's "To a Skylark" is Consistent throughout...
To a Skylark
What is the theme of "To a Skylark" by Percy Shelley?
I believe that the theme of the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelly is that humans cannot possibly feel the carefree joy the skylark feels each and every day as we are incapable of staying...
To a Skylark
In the poem "To a Skylark" what elements bring out special qualities of the song? Shelley uses various images to make...
The entire poem is packed with unique descriptions of the skylark's song. I've listed some images that help us to hear the birds song. "Profuse strains of unmeditated art": He compares the song...
To a Skylark
What power does Shelley seek from the skylark?
Shelley is not interested in a "power" that the bird has, unless it is the power to escape worldly concerns. He imagines that the skylark, flying high above the world, is free of the cares and...
To a Skylark
How do the use of similes contribute to Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To A Skylark"?
Percy Bysshe Shelley believed in reaching people through poetry and, by association, the world could be a better place. The simplicity of the life of the Skylark should not escape man who can...
To a Skylark
Explain how Percy Bysshe relates the skylark's song to his own efforts to write poetry in "To a Skylark."
The skylark is famous for becoming a symbol in Romanticism of beauty, eternity and understanding, amongst other things. In this famous poem, having tried to capture the bird's song and describe...
To a Skylark
Why do you think the writer has chosen the skylark to be the object of his writing? How will you apply the message...
Shelley's choice of a skylark is an example of how the poet identifies a natural setting and applies it to his own life. In doing so, Shelley has been able to link the human experience to a...
To a Skylark
What makes Shelley's ''To a Skylark'' a beautiful poem?
It is notoriously difficult for people to agree on what is or isn't beautiful. This doesn't necessarily mean that beauty is subjective, but there's no doubt that universal assent to the beauty to a...
To a Skylark
to a skylark it describes the skylark of his happiness and he want to fly higher and higher
I agree that Shelley is amazing. The attention to nature and the personification which exists is beautiful. Also, as litteacher points out, the poem is a metaphor. The use of natural imagery allows...
To a Skylark
How does Shelley follow traditional practices in "To a Skylark," and where does he deviate from them?
Shelley largely follows traditional practices in this poem. An ode appreciates or commends something or someone. This poem is an ode because it celebrates the skylark, and it uses apostrophe, which...
To a Skylark
What is Percy Bysshe Shelley trying to convey the reader about the skylark (in the poem "To a Skylark")?
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a Romantic poet. The Romantics typically wrote about very similar things. The characteristics of the works typical of the Romantic poet are: love of nature, love of the...
To a Skylark
Critically assess Shelley's representation of music in "To a Skylark".
This poem, which compares poetry to a bird’s song, is a good example of what Romantic poetry is – “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility” (Worsworth and...
To a Skylark
I want a paragraph on "our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought "
The speaker of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark" is amazed at the sheer joy of the bird to whom he listens. As the bird's "rain of melody" showers down upon him, the poet wonders how such "a...
To a Skylark
Please give me the theme of the poem "Ode to the Skylark" by Percy Shelley and the summary.
Shelley is one of the most well know Romantic poets, meaning he focused on nature, symbolism and myth, the sublime, the individual, the everyday and the exotic. One can see the presence of many of...
To a Skylark
Our teacher asked comment in detail on the use of similes and imageries in the "Ode To A Skylark" by Percy Bysshe...
“In detail” means a long discussion dealing with line-by-line figures of speech. If you said “Lines 36 to 55 are a series of similes,” the teacher would not be happy. If you simply said “The...
To a Skylark
Please explain the thirteenth and fourteenth stanzas of "To a Skylark."
The thirteenth stanza asks the bird to "teach us" what "sweet thoughts" lie behind the bird's song. Shelley claims to never have heard "praise of love or wine" expressed as beautifully as the bird...
To a Skylark
what is the symbolic significance of the poem "To a skylark"?? i want know the symbolic significance of the poem in...
First, in order to give some boundaries to this answer, let me assume that the questioner knows something about the Romantic Poetry movement, the Lake District poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,...