Percy Bysshe Shelley - Essay Example

& No To a Skylark (Shelley) 28 October Introduction Percy Bysshe Shelley is a giant in English literature and more so in his poetic output. He was not very famous during his lifetime and was appreciated only much later after he died. He died young but he had a prodigious output which has remained classics to this day. In his lifetime, he dabbled in radical politics which made him a target of the British establishment. A few of his works included Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind and the Masque of Anarchy. It is perhaps his “To a Skylark” which secured his place in English literary history during a time of English romanticism. This poem is studied and interpreted a number of times for analysis. Although an atheist himself, the Skylark is quite remarkable for its hints of a supreme being, although a bit indirectly only. He was also a fierce idealist who refused to compromise. He led an unconventional bohemian lifestyle representative of most people who are very creative. He traveled a lot and moved his residence several times, depending on his whims. Discussion Shelley’s “To a Skylark” is considered one of the greatest poems during the romantic English period. In this poem, Shelley used the poem to transform a reader’s consciousness by use of metaphor and simile to a great extent. The language used conveys the message which is at once active and urgent as expressed in the bird’s upwards flight (Shelley xlii). In the first few stanzas of the poem, the poet addressed the lark for the extreme noise it is making, efforts to distract potential predators because it nests on the ground and is therefore very vulnerable. Its noise is actually designed to distract predators from its nest and it continues to sing even while it is mostly unseen. Shelley compares it similarly to the human spirit that is unseen too. The purpose of the similes used by Shelley is to enhance the reader’s appreciation of the seemingly simple joys of a skylark. Shelley himself believed that poetry is essentially just a series of metaphors which utilize language’s vitality to demonstrate something abstract into something more concrete (ibid.). “To a Skylark” actually addresses a number of recurrent but important human themes such as joy, inspiration, idealism and aspirations which are largely intangibles but real nonetheless for all of us. The way to appreciate the poem’s merits is to fully realize that a poem is vitally metaphoric in nature. It is now up to the reader to use his imagination and creative thoughts to capture what the poet is trying to convey. All of these literary expressions using similes are in the real sense mere figures of speech. The preponderance of symbolisms in the poem is all designed to help the readers in a way to capture the essence of important concepts like freedom, liberty and vision. Shelley had addressed the bird not as an animal or a material thing but as spirit whose warbling is a sound of pure joy that seems to emanate from heaven itself. In this regard, human aspirations are all attached to the skylark which is able to soar high without any obvious impediments. This is a message Shelley wants to convey in which all aspirations are attainable by strenuous efforts but the sad reality is humans often fall short each time they aspire for something higher. The skylark attains with almost no effort what humans find difficult to accomplish. It is why in the poem, the bird produces from its heart all unpremeditated art which is pure art. A true artist who is a genius in the real sense does not need to think over how his art should be done but everything flows spontaneously and effortlessly. This is not the case with most of us who have to struggle to attain a measure of joy and dignity in this rough-and-tumble world. In the skylark which continues to fly higher and higher until it can no longer be seen, the reader is made to realize how the dreams of humanity sometimes become unreachable. However, the theme is that these ideals are always present in all of us but it takes great effort to attain them. They are like the lark that stays just hidden but is nonetheless very much present in each of us. This was expressed in the fourth paragraph of the poem where Shelley mentioned the lark like a star in heaven but shining in broad daylight which makes it hard to see. In this line, we know human ideals exist within us but we likewise rarely acknowledge them directly. In other words, these ideals are unseen similar to finding a small star during daylight when it is practically impossible to see it but everyone knows it is just there somewhere. We can still in effect hear the lark but we can no longer see it directly as it had gone up much higher. A skylark as something that goes up progressively higher has been compared to a fire. We know fire only goes in one direction and that is upwards but never downwards. This little comparison is very apt because human aspirations are likewise thought to be going upwards and never in the opposite direction. The lark flies so fast it is like the arrows that fly very fast too we can hardly follow their flight paths but we know it is there somewhere because like the lark, we can still hear it but not see it directly. The sheer power of the poem is its creative use of the imagination as embodied in all its symbolisms and similes to conjure up things which are real. The words in effect became real objects to which we can easily connect and understand (Easthope 125). The rather quite extensive use of tropes in this poem makes it a powerful instrument to illustrate aspirations of mankind which are most often never attained or not attained quite that easily. By using similes in the poem, Shelley is able to expand on the import or impact of his words rather forcefully when compared to a situation if he had used definitions directly to describe the lark. The power of the imagination is a very strong force and people who read the poem can interpret its meanings according to their own perceptions and personal circumstances. A lark represents in some ways what humans can never hope to attain by themselves which is a pure joy as shown by the lark’s warbling, that of divine rapture almost. It seems as if the pure joy of a lark makes us think it had never experienced pain or sadness which we humans do all the time. A lark also loves but it has never felt or knew of love’s sad satiety. Shelley had used the similes to improve on the previous inadequacies provided by his choice of words. An example is his use of “all that ever was, joyous and clear, and fresh…” in trying to convey a greater meaning than what ordinary words are incapable of. In this regard, readers now have a better or clearer idea of what is a solitary or hidden poet, the love-lorn princess isolated in the tower, a secretive glow-worm or a scented rose (Sandy 81). Literary experts compare the skylark to the hidden poet who is unseen by the public due to his obscure thoughts; both affect the world in many ways although they are not seen but whose presence is only felt by those around them (ibid.). They cannot be seen but both are very real. The use of similes by Shelley is to depict or illustrate an event or occurrence showing the effects but not the cause of that particular event. The reader is left to conjecture what real causes brought about the event but the more important thing is the effect of the event itself. It is quite common among poets to literally ascribe their feelings to a bird because there is close affinity between the two when it comes to singing (Bloom 42). In Shelley’s poem, the skylark sings of unbounded or “unbodied joy” that is perhaps incomprehensible to most human who had never experienced such kind of pure joy. In other birds, their songs are somewhat sad or melancholic or pained at times similar to human limitations (ibid.) but not with a skylark. Conclusion On a broader sense of perspective, I would view the similes in “To a Skylark” more as metaphors for the human existence. The similes used in the poem are not really intended to be a direct description of the bird itself but more of human emotions and aspirations. Things like joy, inspiration, aspiration, hate, pride and fear are ascribed to the lark through use of similes. In effect, Shelley was actually describing the limitations and frustrations of our own existence and compared them to the skylark in a poetic way by the use of metaphors and similes. Since a poem is never literal in a sense, the reader must understand the hidden meanings with use of similes like in Shelley’s poem where a lark represents all human aspirations if fulfilled. Works Cited Bloom, H. Percy Bysshe Shelley. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2001. Print. Easthope, A. Poetry and Phantasy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print. Sandy, M. Poetics of Self and Form in Keats and Shelley: Nitzschean Subjectivity and Genre. Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005. Print. Shelley, P. B. The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2002. Print. (this is a re-print from 1994). Read More