Ode to the West Wind - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1820
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
You, the unruly west wind, are the essence of the Fall. You are invisible, but you scatter the fallen leaves: they look like ghosts running away from a witch or wizard. The leaves are yellow and black, white and wild red. They look like crowds of sick people. You carry the seeds, as if you're their chariot, down to the earth where they'll sleep all winter. They lie there, cold and humble, like dead bodies in their graves, until your blue sister, the Spring wind, blows her trumpet and wakes up the earth. Then she brings out the buds. They are like flocks of sheep; they feed in the open air. And she fills the meadows and the hills with sweet smells and beautiful colors. Unruly west wind, moving everywhere: you are both an exterminator and a savior. Please listen to me!
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
In the high and whirling reaches of the sky, you send the clouds twirling: they look like dead leaves, shaken loose from the branches of the heavens and the sea. They are like angels, full of rain and lightning. Or they are scattered across the blue sky, like the blond hair of a wildly dancing girl who is a follower of Dionysus. The clouds stretch from the horizon to the top of the sky like the hair of the coming storm. West wind, you sad song of the end of the year. The night will be like the dome of a vast tomb, the clouds you gathered like archways running across it. And from the solid top of that tomb, dark rain, lightning, and hail will fall down. Listen to me!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
You woke the Mediterranean from its summer dreams. That blue sea, which lay wrapped in its crystal-clear currents, was snoozing near an island made of volcanic rock in the Bay of Baiae, near Naples. In the waters of the bay you saw the ruins of old palaces and towers, now submerged in the water's thicker form of daylight. These ruins were overgrown with sea plants that looked like blue moss and flowers. They are so beautiful that I faint when I think of them. You—whose path turns the smooth surface of the Atlantic Ocean into tall waves, while deep below the surface sea-flowers and forests of seaweed, which have leaves with no sap, hear your voice and turn gray from fear, trembling, losing their flowers and leaves—listen to me, wind!
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
If only I was a dead leaf, you might carry me. You might let me fly with you if I was a cloud. Or if I was a wave that you drive forward, I would share your strength—though I’d be less free than you, since no one can control you. If only I could be the way I was when I was a child, when I was your friend, wandering with you across the sky—then it didn’t seem crazy to imagine that I could be as fast as you are—then I wouldn’t have called out to you, prayed to you, in desperation. Please lift me up like a wave, a leaf, or a cloud! I am falling into life’s sharp thorns and bleeding! Time has put me in shackles and diminished my pride, though I was once as proud, fast, and unruly as you.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Make me into your musical instrument, just as the forest is when you blow through it. So what if my leaves are falling like the forest’s leaves. The ruckus of your powerful music will bring a deep, autumn music out of both me and the forest. It will be beautiful even though it’s sad. Unruly soul, you should become my soul. You should become me, you unpredictable creature. Scatter my dead thoughts across the universe like fallen leaves to inspire something new and exciting. Let this poem be a prayer that scatters ashes and sparks—as though from a fire that someone forgot to put out—throughout the human race. Speak through me, and in that way, turn my words into a prediction of the future. O wind, if winter is on its way, isn’t Spring going to follow it soon?
Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats, 1819
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
The speaker says that his heart hurts as if he has just drunk poison. "Hemlock" is the poison that the Greek philosopher Socrates had to take when he was put to death for corrupting the youth. In Greek mythology, "Lethe" was a river in the Underworld (Hades) that made people forget all their memories if they drank from it. "Lethe-wards" means towards Lethe. "Opium" is a powerful drug made from the poppy flower, and it was all the rage among certain adventurous types in the 19th century. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, was an opium addict, as was the writer Thomas de Quincy, who wrote an autobiographical account titled, Confessions of an Opium Eater. In Greek mythology, a "dryad" is a nymph (female spirit) that lives in the trees. The bird makes whatever space or "plot" it inhabits "melodious," and this particular plot seems to have beech trees, giving it a "beechen green" color. The nightingale sings in a "full throated ease", and it sings of the joys and beauties of summer.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Vintage wine is a wine of high quality made from the crop of a single identified district in a good year. Good wine needs to be kept cool, that is why it is often stored in the cellars. According to the lyric speaker, the earth is like a giant wine cellar. Not only does the earth's wine taste like flowers, but it also tastes like dancing, song, and happiness ("sunburnt mirth"). Specifically, he is thinking of "Provencal," a region in the south of France known for its wine, sun, and a kind of poetic songs known as "Troubadour poetry." The speaker wants to stick the south of France, or just the South in general, into a bottle ("beaker") and guzzle the whole thing down! Hippocrene is the "fountain of the Muses," a group of nine women, who inspire struggling poets. The fountain bubbles up out of the earth where Pegasus, the famous flying horse, is supposed to have dug its hoof into the ground. Inspiration is something which doesn't always come easily, that is why the source of it has been called blushful, a characteristic associated with being shy. In delicious detail, the speaker describes the appearance of the wine. It has little bubbles that burst, or "wink," at the brim of the beaker, like little eyes. It also stains the mouth purple when drunk. The speaker sums up his intentions in these final two lines of the stanza. He wants to get drunk on this magical wine so that he can leave the "world" without anyone noticing and just "fade" into the dark forest with the nightingale.
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
The speaker dreams of "fading" out of the world, of just disappearing in a very quiet way. He wants to forget about those things that the nightingale has never had to worry about. The world is full of tired and "weary" people, sickness ("fever"), and massive stress ("fret"). He reduces all of society down to one depressingly exaggerated image: people sitting around and listening to each other "groan" and complain. Palsy (paralysis) is a disease that causes sudden involuntary movements, and so this gray-haired person is no longer capable of controlling his own body. The world is a place where any kind of thinking leads to depressing thoughts and worries. There are no thoughts that can ultimately bring joy or peace: thinking itself is the problem. These sad and "despairing" thoughts make the eyelids like lead weights. Neither Beauty nor Love can survive there for long.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
In the fourth stanza, the lyric speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him “viewless wings.” Bacchus is the mythological god of wine (equivalent of Dionysus). He is hopeful that poetry will take him to the nightingale's world although his brain confuses (perplexes) him and slows him down (retards). All of a sudden, he fancies himself being with the nightingale. He is in the kingdom of the night, which is soft and "tender," and the moon is visible in the sky. The imagery is more fanciful and imaginative here. The phrase "tender is the night" was made famous by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used it as the title of one of his novels. The moon is surrounded by her attendants ("fays"), the stars. Despite all these sources of light, there is no light where the speaker is, beyond what filters down through the trees; the light only breaks through when the breezes blow the branches. "Verdurous glooms," means the darkness that is caused by plants getting in the way of the moonlight. The word Verdurous means rich in verdure or freshly green.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see what flowers are at his feet, but he can guess them “in embalmed darkness” depending on their smell and what month it is. The scents that the speaker distinguishes are of the grass, the surrounding thicket where he is hiding, the wild fruit trees, white hawthorn, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose ("mid-May's eldest child"). The speaker imagines the musk-rose being filled with nectar which attracts flies to gather around it. By the phrase "embalmed darkness," he means pleasantly scented darkness. Keats' poetry is distinguished by its wonderful descriptions and sensuality, more than any other profundity of thought.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
In the dark, he listens to the song and thinks that death would be easy at this moment while listening to the Nightingale's song. The speaker calls the death in many a mused rhyme to take into the air his breath. Keats was obsessed with the idea of death, and he often wrote about it. Surrounded by the nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. Suddenly, the speaker starts thinking against dying, he imagines what could possibly happen after his death. Basically, the bird would keep singing as if nothing had happened. The bird would then be singing a "high requiem," a solemn chant for the repose of the dead, and the speaker, by that point, would just be an inanimate object, like a piece of grassy soil or "sod" and would have his ears in vain.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
From the thought of his own mortality and mutability, the speaker turns to the contrast and asserts that the Nightingale is immortal and unchanging. However, he doesn't necessarily mean that each nightingale is immortal; he means that the nightingale's song is immortal because all nightingales produce the same beautiful, haunting sound. Where Keats is weighed down by the heavy tread of history, the bird moves easily through time and space, its unchanging song being heard by people of all types (‘emperor and clown’) throughout the ages. 'The Book of Ruth' is a part of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) that tells the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who after being widowed goes with her mother-in-law (Naomi) to her mother-in-law's native place, a foreign land named Bethlehem, where she starts working in a corn field. Ruth then became the wife of Boaz, the wealthy kinsman of her former husband, and bore Obed, who, according to the final verses of the book, was the grandfather of David. The speaker imagines that Ruth heard the nightingale's song while she was working in the fields in this foreign or "alien" place, and it caused her to weep. A "casement" is either a normal case or a window that opens on a hinge. The speaker thinks the nightingale's song has "charmed" casements looking out over “the foam/ Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
In the eighth stanza, the very word "forlorn" tolls like a bell to restore the speaker from his preoccupation with the nightingale back to his "sole self." He admits that his attempts to use his imagination ("fancy") to "cheat" his way into the nightingale's world is a failure. He bids good-bye to the bird and then lashes out at his imagination, his fancy for being a "deceiving elf." The speaker bids goodbye twice more to the nightingale using the French word, "adieu," which means goodbye. The bird's sad or "plaintive" song grows fainter, as the bird flies past the near meadows, over the still stream, up the hill-side into the next valley-glades. Now that the bird is gone, the speaker is not sure if he ever entered into its world at all. Keats concludes the poem with unresolved questions. He is confused and he doesn't know what is true from what is fancy. In fact, he wonders if he is even awake or just sleeping.
To a Skylark - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1820
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.
“To a Skylark” begins with the speaker, Percy Bysshe Shelley (as was detailed in the introduction), pointing out a skylark in the sky. He calls out to the bird, not in greeting, but in reverence, “Hail to thee.” He is amazed at the sight, and as the reader will later discover, the song of the bird. He refers to the bird as “blithe Spirit,” meaning happiness or joyful. Shelley sees this bird as the epitome of joy. It is less a bird, and more an essence, a “Spirit.” It is the best of all birds, it appears so beautiful to Shelley at that moment that he claims it has come from “Heaven,” or at least from somewhere “near it.” The bird is swooping in the sky and “Pour[ing]” from it’s “heart” a song that is described as “profuse,” or abundant, and full of “unpremeditated art.” It is an artful song that is not planned or scripted and is, therefore, all the more beautiful.
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 second stanza of ‘To a Skylark‘, Shelley makes some additional observations. The bird is not stopping its ascent, it is flying “Higher still” as if it has sprung up from the earth. He compares the skylark to “a cloud of fire.” It is powerful and unstoppable. Perhaps the bird is returning to the “Heaven” from where it first came. Even though the bird is still ascending, it also keeps up its song. It does the two simultaneously, it “still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.”
In the golden lightning
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 bird is ascending up towards the “golden lightening” of the sun. The sun is “sunken” or low on the horizon, a most likely setting for the day, giving the scene greater ambiance as sunrise and sunset have always been seen as magical times. It flies up over the clouds that are closest to the sun. It is as if the bird is “float[ing] and run[ing].” Behind the skylark is the power of “unbodied joy” that does not run out of energy, it’s “race is just begun.”
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
At this point in ‘To a Skylark‘, the bird becomes obscured in the “pale purple” sky. The sun is truly going down and the light in the sky is changing. It seems to “Melt” around the skylark as it flies. Shelley compares this scene to one that the reader might come across during the day. As one casts their eyes to the sky during the day it is impossible to see stars, “but yet” one knows they are there. This same thing stands true for Shelley who senses the bird’s presence but can no longer see it. It is as if the bird has become “a star of Heaven,” or perhaps it already was.
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.
In the fifth stanza, Shelley makes a comparison between the bird and the moon. He is directly relating happiness and joy to the beauty of the natural world, a theme that Shelley was not unfamiliar with. The bird is as “Keen” as the “arrows” of light that emanate from the “silver sphere” that is the moon. At night the moon is “intense[ly] bright,” but during the day, once “white dawn clear[s],” it is very hard to see. It eventually disappears but we still know and “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.
The poet expands on this idea in the sixth stanza: The entire atmosphere of the earth, all the one can see and cannot see, depending on the time of day is made greater when the bird’s voice is there. The bird is like the rays of the moon that rain down from Heaven.
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.
It is at this point that the poet will once more return to the idea that the bird is more than just a creature, it is representing something greater. It is the essence of happiness and all that is needed to live a joyful life. The speaker begins by stating that he does not know exactly what the skylark is, only what he can think to compare it to. He names off a number of things that he could compare the bird to. The first is “rainbow clouds,” which sound pristinely beautiful, but the poet quickly dismisses them, as the “Drops” they rain are nothing compared to the “melody” that “showers” from the skylark’s presence.
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:
The next couple stanzas continue on this theme as Shelley tries to figure out how exactly to describe the bird. It is, he states, like a poetic impulse that cannot be restrained. It is “singing hymns unbidden that have unintended, but wonderful, consequences. The song of the bird forces sympathy to surface in the minds of those that have not in the past heeded the “hopes and fears” of others. It is actively and morally improving those who hear its song.
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:
Stanza nine of ‘To a Skylark‘ provides the reader with another comparison. The skylark is said to be like a “high-born maiden” that is locked away in a “palace-tower.” From there, way above her lover, as the bird is above the poet, she is able to secretly “Sooth” his “soul.” Her words, just like the bird’s music, are “sweet as love” and in the case of the maiden, it “overflows her bower.”
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Shelley still has a couple more comparisons to share. He sees the bird as a “glow-worm” that is emanating “golden” light in a “dell,” or small valley in the woods, amongst the “dew.” This small moment of beauty is as delicate and important as the moment in which Shelley is living. These natural comparisons are those that bring Shelley the closest to relaying the emotion he felt while hearing and briefly seeing the skylark. The bird is “Scattering” it’s “hue” or happiness from the sky. It is “unbeholden” to anyone or anything, it’s mind and actions are it’s own. Its joy is raining down “Among the flowers and grass,” its essence is becoming a part of everything, not seen, but felt.
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-winged thieves:
In the eleventh stanza, the speaker presents one final comparison. The sounds, the feeling, and the look of the bird reminds Shelley of a “rose” that is protected, or “embower’d” but it’s own leaves. The protection does not last forever and “warm winds” can blow off all of its flowers and spread its scent within the breeze. Quickly the “sweet” of the petals are too much even for the winds, “those heavy-winged 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.
The speaker’s metaphor extends into the twelfth stanza. The sound of the bird’s song is beyond everything. It “surpass[es]” everything that ever was before considered “Joyous, and clear, and fresh.” It is better than the “Sound of vernal,” or spring, “showers” landing on the “twinkling grass” and the beauty of the flowers that rain will have “awaken’d.”
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.
This is a turning point in ‘To a Skylark‘ where the speaker, having exhausted his metaphors, turns back to the skylark and addresses it. He is hoping that the “Bird,” or perhaps it is more apt to call it a “Sprite” as it embodies an emotion, what thoughts it is thinking. As a poet, he is trying to relate to this flood of art and has in his life never seen anything that can inspire such beauty. Not “Praise of love or wine.”
Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match’d with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
The song of the bird is described as being like a hymn sung by a chorus as well as like a “triumphal chant.” It is suited to all occasions and all contingencies of human life. It can equally outmatch religious or war-time subject matter and inspiration. Anything that would even attempt to compete with the bird would be “an empty vaunt,” or a baseless boast. Other songs would clearly be missing something, an element that is impossible to name, but clearly not there.
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?
Once more the speaker probes the bird’s mind. “What,” he asks, are you thinking about? “What objects,” or visions does your beautiful song come from? He is determined in his questions, willing the bird with all his might to answer. He believes that just around the corner, with just a few words from the bird, he will have the answer to one of life’s greatest questions. How to find happiness. He poses a number of options, is your song inspired by “fields, or waves or mountains?” Or perhaps it is given its form by the “shapes of sky or plain,” meaning fields. He continues questioning. Does your son come from “love of thine own kind?” A love that the skylark has found amongst its own species or just a life blessed without 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.
The speaker does not believe that someone who has ever felt pain, the “Shadow of annoyance,” or “Languor” could produce this song of “keen joyance.” In fact, these elements of life can’t have even come close to touching the skylark. He knows, somehow, that the bird has experienced the wonders of love, without “love’s sad satiety,” or disappointing conclusions.
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?
From the notes of the bird’s song, Shelley continues to make guesses about its interior life. He believes that for the bird to be able to produce such a pure sound it must understand much more about life and death than “we mortals dream.” This knowledge must be given from beyond and therefore, the beyond is where the sounds must come.
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.
‘To a Skylark‘ is in its conclusion and the speaker, Percy Bysshe Shelley, continues to make sweeping claims about the nature of the skylark. He compares, in this stanza, the way that humans view death to the way that the skylark must. “We” are only able to view death as “before and after” while “pin[ing]” for what we don’t have. We are incapable of enjoying anything without remembering our own pain. This is clearest through our “sweetest songs” which are not as pure as the skylark’s unbridled happiness.
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.
The poet continues on, stating that even if the human race was able to shake off their “Hate, and pride and fear” and all the very human things with which we are born, even if we are able to find a state of being in which we “shed” not a “tear,” still, we would not know the joy that the skylark does. We would not be able to “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!
In the final two stanzas of ‘To a Skylark‘, the poet makes one final plea to the skylark. He begins by saying that the ability to sing and experience happiness as the skylark does is worth more to him than all “treasures / That in books are found.” It is better “than all measures” of other “delightful sound.”
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.
He asks the skylark to please, “Teach me half the gladness / That thy brain must know.” If Shelley could even know a portion of the bird’s pleasure he believes that from “my lips” a “harmonious madness” would flow. He would be overcome with his own new abilities. His joyful sound would force the world to listen to him as intently as he is now listening to the skylark. All in all, ‘To a Skylark‘ is about a man’s search for happiness. At points he seems on the verge of desperation, hoping beyond hope that this small bird will answer his biggest question. This poem is notably relatable for this reason. Who has not wanted in their bleakest moments, a quick fix, an instant reprieve, or a way into perpetual joy?
To Autumn - John Keats, 1820
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Autumn, the season associated with mists and a general sense of calm abundance, you are an intimate friend of the sun, whose heat and light helps all these fruits and vegetables grow. You work closely with the sun to make lots of fruit grow on the vines that wrap around the roof edges of the farmhouses. You work to make so much fruit grow that it weighs down the branches of the mossy apple trees that grow outside the farmhouses. Together, you and the sun make every fruit completely ripe. You make gourds swell and hazel shells grow fat with a sweet nut inside. You make the flowers grow new buds and keep growing more, and when these buds bloom, bees gather the flowers' pollen. Those bees think your warmth will last forever, because summer brought so many flowers and so much pollen that the beehives are now overflowing with honey.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Who hasn't noticed you, Autumn, in the places where your bounty is kept? Any person who finds themselves wandering about is likely to find you sitting lazily on the floor of the building where grain is stored, and notice your hair lifted by a light wind that separates strands of hair in the same way a harvester might separate the components of a grain of wheat. Anyone might also find you asleep in the fields, on an incompletely harvested crop row, fatigued because of the sleep-inducing aroma of the poppies. In that case, your scythe, which you'd been using to cut the crops, would be cast to the side—it would just be lying there, and therefore the next section of the twisted flowers would be saved from being cut. Sometimes, Autumn, you're like the agricultural laborer who picks up loose cuttings from the fields after the harvest—like this laborer, who has to be observant, you watch the stream with your full, heavy head of fruit and leaves. Other times you patiently watch the machine that juices the apples for cider, noting how the juice and pulp slowly ooze out of the machine over the course of many hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Where is the music that characterizes spring (for example, birdsong)? I repeat, Where is it? Don't think about the spring and its typical music—you have your own music. The background for your music is a scene in which beautiful, shadowed clouds expand in the evening sky and filter the sunlight such that it casts pink upon the fields, which have been harvested. Your music includes gnats, which hum mournfully among the willows that grow along the riverbanks, and which rise and fall according to the strength of the wind. It includes mature, fully grown lambs that make their baah sound from the fence of their hilly enclosure. It includes crickets singing in the bushes and a red-breasted bird that softly whistles from a small garden. And lastly, it includes the growing flock of swallows, which rise and sing together against the darkening sky.
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