Hello friends, I am here today with one of the most popular poems ever written and that is the poem by Percy Baishy Shelley titled To a Skylark and it is such a beautiful poem and one of my personal favorites and I'm very happy that I'm going to talk about this poem today. Now this poem is an ode, you know what an ode is? It is a poem which has a very elaborate stanzaic structure and it usually is addressed to a person. It glorifies a person or it celebrates somebody or something. So that kind or it expresses an intense emotion.
So that kind of a poem which is again elevated in style, intensely emotional. So that is what you would call an ode. And this one, Shelley's Ode to a Skylark, is one of the most popular odes written in the English language. Now, Shelley, of course, you know, is one of the later romantic writers.
The other two being Keats and Byron. And you know who the early romantics are, don't you? The early romantics are Wordsworth and Coleridge. Okay, now this particular poem, it's a long one, but But it is such a beautiful poem that you would actually regret it being just 21 stanzas.
You would want it to be longer. So this has 21 stanzas and each stanza comprises of 5 lines. And there is the rhyme scheme that is followed throughout ABA, BD.
Now this poem was written in 1820. And it was actually... Inspired by the song of a skylark. Skylark is a songbird and it is believed that Shelley and his wife Mary, Mary Shelley, they were in Italy at that time in a place called Livorno and one evening they were just taking a walk along the lanes of the village and that is when they happened to hear the sweet sound or the sweet song of the skylark and it is this experience that prompted shelly to write this particular poem and shelly is an idealist among these romantics an idealist he had such lofty ideas and he wanted to change the world for the better but unfortunately all his ideas were met with antagonism he had to face a lot of opposition when he was alive he faced a lot of criticism for the kind of poetry that he wrote and for the kind of ideas that he voiced and it is due to this abundant idealism of Shelley that Matthew Arnold a critic who came later you know that he is also a Victorian poet he said this about Shelley he said that Shelley is a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain okay a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain so Shelley was quite disappointed with the way the world reacted to him let's now go on to the poem and so as I said Shelley continued to remain an idealist till the end of his life and you know that his life was cut short very in a very untimely manner and he drowned to death now let's take a look at the poem since it is to 21 stanzas i am not going to read the whole poem first as i usually try to do in my videos let's just take them stanza by stanza now the first stanza hail to the blight spirit bird thou never worked that from heaven or near it pours thy full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art okay so right from the first line he launches into um glorifying the bird and he's he greets the bird hail to thee blithe spirit he doesn't call it the bird here he calls it a spirit and why so because he had only heard the sound of the bird he had not seen it Most of these songbirds we know that they like to keep themselves invisible.
The cuckoo which we Indians are very familiar with, you will have to search for the bird. It would be sitting unobserved in some high branch of a tree but the sound would kind of pervade the entire area. So same way maybe...
Shelley too only heard the bird he did not see it so that is why he calls it blithe spirit bird thou never were so he says you were not a bird that from heaven or near it pours their full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art so you were not you are not a bird you are a spirit because you were somewhere in heaven or near it because the bird sings from somewhere high up and you pour your full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art now the bird unlike human beings For the bird, the art is instantaneous, spontaneous. It doesn't do any rehearsals before the real show. So whatever comes out is art in its original form. It is unpremeditated. It doesn't sit down to compose music or it doesn't check the musical notes.
It just sings in profuse strains. It is so natural and so original. So that is the first stanza.
Second one. higher still and higher from the earth thou springest like a cloud of fire the blue deep thou wingest and singest still that so and soaring ever singest so there you have having you have the poet continuing the same image of this bird being something kind of ethereal unearthly and then he from the second stanza onwards he goes on to give us a lot of similes such beautiful similes what does he say here in this stanza he says he compares this bird to a cloud of fire that springs from the earth and soars high into the sky a kind of a flame a flame of orange and red mixed something that it's some it's that it kind of extends from the earth up into the skies like a cloud of fire and it's it's kind of the sound of the bird spreads all over the sky and this bird he compares to a cloud of fire that seems to be floating all over and the bird sings as its soars high and soars as it sings so the singing and soaring happens at the same time and what is the blue deep here the blue deep is the sky in the golden lightning of the sun over which clouds are brightening thou doth float and run like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun so the next comparison you can see the evening sky because everywhere there is golden light and the sun is slowly setting and sinking down into the ocean and there you can see the bright clouds because you know at sunset the clouds would reflect the light of the Sun and they would be bright golden and orange and yellow in color and amidst all this you can see or you can hear the bird floating and running like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun so unbodied it doesn't have a body and it is just pure joy in its elemental form without a physical body. 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. So now it is evening and the evening is kind of purple in color and as the bird is flying you can see the evening melting in the same way.
sense that the purple kind of deepens. The bird is bright like the star of heaven. Now again the bird cannot be seen.
It is the music of the bird that stands bright like a star of heaven. Now a star cannot be seen in broad daylight. We know that all the stars are there all the time but when the sun rises they all kind of dim or fade away under the brilliance of the sun but the stars are still there so same way he says like a star of heaven in the broad daylight you are unseen we cannot see you but we I can hear you Your shrill delight, keen as are the arrows of the silver sphere, whose intense lamp narrows in the white dawn clear, until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. The next comparison is to the moon, the silver sphere.
in the next stanza refers to the moon and the moon is very bright in the night but then what happens to the moon as the day dawns and progresses the moon becomes dimmer and you don't see it that is why whose intense lamp narrows in the white dawn clear until we hardly see we feel it is there so though you don't see the moon you still know that the moon is there so this bird again is like the moon that is invisible in the daylight only the sound of the bird can be heard 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 overflowed it's a brilliant picture he says the whole earth and air it's an exaggeration of course it's hyperbelly uh the whole earth and air is it kind of reverberates with your sound and the comparison here is this when the night is bare here the meaning is when the sky is kind of bare there are not too many stars and There is just one lonely cloud and The moon is hidden behind the cloud and you don't see the moon but you can see the moon beam scattered to all the sides of this cloud and it floods the heaven or floods the sky. So same way the bird is not seen. See in all these stanzas the idea is that the bird is invisible.
That is why he says the moon is there, the moon beams can be seen. But the moon itself is invisible. What thou art we know not, what is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds they flow not, drop so bright to see, as from thy presence showers a rain of melody. So now he is kind of intrigued by this bird and he wonders what are you? Are you a bird?
Can you give us some kind of, can you tell us what is most like you so that at least we can have an idea of what you are? So he asks this question, what thou art we know not, what is most like thee? most like thee and he says from rainbow clouds from colorful clouds even when when drops of water fall from colorful clouds we do not see anything as your as beautiful as your music as from thy presence showers a rain of melody the melody the musical the harmony that falls that is emitted out of your throat that you produce is not even the shower the beautiful rain is not half as beautiful as your reign of melody like a poet hidden in the light of thought singing hymns unbidden till the world is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears it he did not so again he now compares the bird to a poet a poet who is hidden in the sense a poet who maybe uses a pseudonym a poet who is anonymous people read his poems but they don't know who the man is or who the woman is for that matter like a poet hidden in the light of thought singing hymns unbidden so the poet sings or the poet writes poems not because somebody asks him to but because it kind of emanates from his inner soul and so the poet continues to write whether the world listens to him or not maybe here the reference is to Shelley himself because Shelley as I told you at the beginning was not received well his poetry was criticized yet he continues to write So he must be thinking of himself when he wrote this, must have been thinking of himself when he wrote this.
So he says, like a poet hidden in the light of thought, singing hymns unbidden, unbidden without being asked for, till the world is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. So the poet keeps on writing until one day the world stops to listen to him and gives heed or pays attention to the hopes and fears that he expresses in his poems. So though the poet may be hidden, his poetry captures the attention of the public. So that is another comparison, a hidden poet.
whose brilliance of thought spreads all over. The next comparison. 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.
Now here again a beautiful comparison. He compares this unseen bird to a high-born maiden, maybe a princess or a woman belonging to a noble family, who is who lives in a palace tower and her heart is love laden she is unable to meet her lover and she is tortured by the absence of her lover and she tries to soothe herself by singing beautiful songs or by playing music so soothes her love laden soul in secret hour secret hour maybe sometime late in the night she is unable to sleep So she starts singing to comfort herself, to console her overwhelmed heart. And this song, it overflows her bawa, a bawa or her room.
The music cannot be contained within the room, even though the windows and doors are closed, and it flows out, the musical notes flow out from the room. Same way, the bird is not seen, but then it can be heard. Like a glow worm golden in a dell of dew scattering and behold in its aerial hue among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
This is another comparison which I really like. He says that when a glow worm, a golden glow worm is hidden in a dell of dew. Dew you know what dew is the water drops that are formed in the night and sometimes a glow worm is hidden and there is the flowers and the grass surround this glowworm.
You cannot really see it, but then you catch a glimpse of the light of this glowworm. Like a glowworm golden in a... a dell of dew scattering and behold and unbeholden unseen it's aerial hue hue is color okay among the flowers and grass which screen it from you so the flowers and grass screen the glowworm you cannot really see it but because of the light that slowly comes out emits you can understand that there is a glowworm there like a rose empowered in its own green leaves by warm wings winds deflowered till the scent it gives makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves now going on to the next you can see there is a series of wonderfully beautiful similes now here the next one you cannot say which one is better than the other like a rose and bowed in its own green leaves like a rose which is embowered here means which is covered with its own green leaves and what happens you know that a rose is a very fragrant flower so when the winds come there when the wind blows the it takes away the fragrance takes away in the sense it spreads the fragrance of this hidden flower by the warm winds deflowered till the scent it gives makes faint with too much sweet those heavy winged thieves now who are the heavy winged thieves the heavy winged thieves are the warm winds they come there they try to take away the fragrance of this they try to carry away the fragrance of the rose and what does the rose do i mean the scent is so strong that these heavy winged thieves um become faint they are kind of intoxicated with the smell of this rose sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass rain awakened flowers all that ever was joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass so Shelley cannot stop finding comparisons and similes to describe the sweetness of the birds sound and so he says the sound of vernal showers the sound of summer showers on the twinkling grass the sound of very sweet and the very soothing the very low voice of noise of rain water summer showers falling on the grass rain awakened flowers that is the flowers that bloom when the rain water falls on them everything that is joys and clear and fresh your music goes beyond all these i have no words to describe the divine quality and the beauty of your music