To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

NOTE: The skylark is Shelley's ode to imagination. It is not the sublime and dark "intellectual beauty," but a celebration of what Coleridge called "the Primary Imagination." If it were possible for this faculty of the mind to exist physically, then the skylark in this poem is its embodiment.

 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.

In the golden light'ning
    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.

The pale purple even
    Melts around thy flight;
 Like a star of heaven,
    In the broad daylight
 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight-

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.

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.

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:-

MOTIF: The unknown here is not the same mystifying and "unseen Power" of intellectual beauty, but rather an acknowledgment of never having reached the ideal even though one strives for it. The skylark represents the Imagination incarnate.

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:

STC: the poet

 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:

Like a glow-worm golden
    In a dell of dew,
 Scattering unbeholden
    Its a�rial hue
 Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

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-wing�d thieves.

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.

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.

Chorus hymeneal,
    Or triumphal chant,
 Match'd with thine would be all
    But an empty vaunt-
 A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

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?

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.

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?

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.

STC: contraries
MOTIF: The oppositions that make up poetry are here cited by the speaker: "before and after," having and wanting, laughter and pain, "sweetest songs" and "saddest thought."

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.

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!

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.

NOTE: Ultimately, the speaker beseeches the skylark to teach him its song. Despite the joyous tone of this poem, the poet remains human. "Harmonious madness" is just beyond his reach. Yet this realization is not so much a tempering of joy as much as it makes the poem an acknowledgment of Shelley's philosophy that "poetry redeems from decay the visitations of divinity on man."