Summary of 'Ode To A Skylark' in simple words: C.U. English Honours Notes

Most of the students find reading and understanding the poems quite difficult and frustrating. The key to understanding the poem is to understand its 'theme' and 'summary'. If you know these two basic things then you will be able to write any answer on any given poem. Here is a smart summary of the poem Ode To A Skylark which carefully breaks the whole poem in simple language and gives a clear view of the theme without sounding much difficult.

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According to Near Eastern mythology, the lark was the first creature to live upon the earth. Even today, he carries his father or creator inside the crest of his head. In other regions, the lark became associated with the "Spirit of the Wheat" and eventually with Christ who proclaimed, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever" (John 6:51; see also John 6:32-50). This bird's use as a symbol of Christ was strengthened by the fact that it helps rid wheat fields of locust eggs, caterpillars, and the harvest beetle - destructive creatures which were symbols of the devil. Because he makes his nest on the ground, the lark, like Christ is considered an intermediary between heaven and earth and a symbol of the marriage of heaven and earth. 

Because the lark soars straight into the heavens and, upon reaching a great height, hovers there singing a joyful song, this bird is considered an emblem of glad prayers to the Creator inspired by the joys of being alive. He is believed to pray for the sowers of the wheat fields and, allegorically, for the sowers of Christ's fields. Its association with prayer makes this bird a symbol of the priesthood. In Scotland, it is said that the song of the lark may be understood by any person who lies quietly in the fields and listens to it. A British superstition states that drinking three lark's eggs will give one a beautiful singing voice. The singing lark is especially a symbol of the praying Christ as He ascends into Heaven, blessing His disciples (Luke 24:50-51; see also Acts 1:9; Mk 16:19).
This bird also symbolizes freedom, ardor, joy, youth, happiness, and the desire to be happy. Among the French, lark's legs are carried as good luck charms in the same way as rabbit's feet are treasured by the superstitious.

Remarkable in many ways, a great in his own time, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a man amongst men, a poet among poets, and an educator of life amongst all. His great poetry tells stories of life's lessons that you would never ever think about. He's educated people of many ages with his great poetry, telling them about his life, the good, the bad, and the simple. His works will be treated as a great reference for many years as great poets emerge from our peers. In my eyes and many more, Percy Bysshe Shelley will always be a Great.

Born in the year of was initially a fan of Wordsworth's poetry. He believed that Wordsworth's early poetry implicitly challenged the status quo because it self-consciously set out to transform the definition of poetry. Wordsworth's early poetry distinguishes itself from eighteenth-century verse with its focus on humble subjects and its use of "everyday" language, even as it also employs the formal devices traditional found in English verse, like personification, regular meter, and rhyme schemes. Shelley read Wordsworth's poetic innovations as political statements that implicitly called for a more egalitarian society that would reflect the ambitions of the first French Revolutionaries, whose rallying cry was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Shelley believed, in short, that art could change the world by offering to the reader's imagination what the "real" world denies: possibilities for rethinking and hence remaking the social hierarchy. Later Shelley came to believe that Wordsworth never lived up to his original promise as a poet because his later work "betrayed" the radical ideas of his early poetry: Shelley believed that Wordsworth, because his work tended to celebrate the enduring elements of Britain society -- like its countryside -- had abandoned the radical cause in England. His reading of Wordsworth's career is substantially correct: Wordsworth became progressively more conservative over the course of his lifetime. In 1816, Shelley published a sonnet lamenting Wordsworth's betrayal of "truth and liberty" . Shelley's poetry shares with Wordsworth and Coleridge a powerful interest in the human imagination. For Shelley, in the imagination lay the only hope for a more free and egalitarian society. Exercising the imagination could enable the reader to see new possibilities in the world around him or her; it could also make possible empathy and sympathy for all other human beings. Reading and writing poetry, thus, is the only means by which people can imagine and make possible a better world. Shelley's philosophy can loosely be summarized as "change the heart and you change the world." Shelley believed that the engagement of the imagination made possible the two conditions necessary for the individual to work for political change: first, empathy for those less fortunate; and second, the capacity to imagine a world of political equality.

The poem I chose for to analyze was "To a Skylark." I will try my best to tell you about this poem. It was written in 1820, originally published with "Prometheus Unbound" the same year. His wife, Mary Shelley writes " It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems." This poem has a rhyme scheme of: ababb. It was written in the romantic period.


It has been said to be a great work of literature. The best poetry is what Shelley terms "unpremeditated art". This is almost in line with the Zen philosophy of effortless achievement. This, perhaps the loveliest of Shelley's poems, is a tribute of art born of pure understanding. But there is also an acknowledgement that the emotions of humans, hate, pride, fear, sorrow, are essential ingredients of the human experience, however flawed that might be. It is said that these lines:
"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."
are some of the greatest lines in English poetry to this very day. A tribute to his muse, something like ‘Kubla Khan’ or Wordsworth's ‘Highland Lass’, inspiring them to heights of poetry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley completed the poem entitled "To a Skylark" in late June 1820. It was written near Livorno, Italy. It was inspired by an evening walk in the country with Mary Shelley, and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon. Mary Shelley observed "we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of his most beautiful poems." The poem uses a unique five line stanza with a 3 beat line except for the fifth line, which doubles the number beats of the other lines, and it has a rhyme scheme that is consistently 'abab.' However, the fifth line does not follow the rhyme scheme of the first four lines but varies the line that it rhymes with.
Shelley is using the skylark both rhetorically and metaphorically. The Skylark transcends the ordinary; it is a nexus of idealism and Shelley's own radical thought. Its message has the power to raise the political consciousness and promote the change that the poet desires. The poet knows that freedom is not only physical and asks the skylark to tell him its "sweet thoughts," for never has he heard anything with "a flood of rapture so divine." He also knows that with only 'half the gladness that thy brain must know' the seed of life itself could awake from its dormant state of inactivity; rejecting human suffering and promoting the outer beauty of collective harmony. Shelley's skylark is a 'sphere' of joy, undulating hope and an overflowing propensity to instill belief. The skylark touches the essence of existence, it knows that "life" and all its "pleasure" and "beauty" is achievable. The poet also emphatically reminds us, however, that "The world should listen then, as I am listening now."

Whatever emotions "To A Skylark' invokes, Shelley was, as he himself believed, a philosopher first and a poet second. Shelley tried in his way to be free. Free from the complacency of his contemporaries and free to express his observations through his poetical message. The bellowing tones of the 'skylark' echo this message resonantly almost two hundred years from the date it was written. It is a testimony to those of us who, through creative expression, try to carve our own niche of freedom. It is ironic then that in a world with a more open forum for political expression the 'dead poets’ society' of past generations is fast becoming one of the last vestiges of radical thought. Or maybe Shelley was just a 'happy genius who tried to live a sad life' and consoled himself in the beauty of nature as an end itself. The babbling brooks, the rustling trees, the smiling flowers thus devoid of radical significance. Innate objects flourishing in their natural habitat and fueling his poetic expression. Imagination is the soul itself! In the final stanza, Shelley concerns himself with wanting to be a skylark. He longs to be released from the chains of monotony in his life. This desire is the 'hidden meaning' of Shelley's poem.

The skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic expression, the "harmonious madness" of pure inspiration. The skylark's song issues from a state of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of complete unity with Heaven through nature; its song is motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint of melancholy or of the bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylark's unimpeded song rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all, but a "Spirit." In that sense, the skylark is almost an exact twin of the bird in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"; both represent pure expression through their songs, and like the skylark, the nightingale "wast not born for death." But while the nightingale is a bird of darkness, invisible in the shadowy forest glades, the skylark is a bird of daylight, invisible in the deep bright blue of the sky. The nightingale inspires Keats to feel "a drowsy numbness" of happiness that is also like pain, and that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has no part of pain. To Keats, human joy and sadness are inextricably linked, as he explains at length in the final stanza of the "Ode on Melancholy." But the skylark sings free of all human error and complexity, and while listening to his song, the poet feels free of those things, too.

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