The Romantic poets recognized birds as a symbol of the connection between the natural and supernatural worlds and often as a symbol of art. Let's look at how this works as we focus on the three poems.

We can begin with Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark." The poet combines both themes in his bird. This apparently natural creature seems to him to be more like a spirit from Heaven soaring down to teach the world poetry and song that is beyond the talents of almost everything else. The bird teaches lessons about life and death and beauty that are beyond human thought yet that also draw humans upward into beauty and joy. The bird becomes a teacher of aspiring poets.

Now let's turn our attention to John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." Again, the bird sings with a beauty and joy that touch the speaker and make him long for what the bird has. The bird's song makes the speaker look back in time to a world that is gone, and he longs to leave the current world and forget its sorrows and pains. The bird's song also makes the speaker melancholy, for its immortality reminds him of his own mortality. The music is heartbreakingly beautiful yet unattainable to the speaker.

Finally, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the albatross is a supernatural symbol to the mariners, and the one who kills it brings down a horrible curse upon himself and his shipmates. The mariner spends the rest of the poem trying to rid himself of the curse and of his guilt. The symbolism of the albatross is deep and complex, and the bird points to the connections between the natural and supernatural.