Thank you so much for this - it really is thought-provoking. How much of the following would have occurred to me otherwise, I'm honestly not sure. In Keats' "Nightingale" stanza 3, the poet wants to "Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget/What thou among the leaves hast never known.." and describes humanity's suffering from physical ailments. Shelley, on the other hand, refers in stanza 19 of "Skylark", to "Hate, and Pride, and Fear" (so to speak, man-made, rather than "natural", afflictions) - was this because Shelley was a more overt revolutionist than Keats? We also get a reference to Hamlet (I think I've otherwise missed any reference to Hamlet) in stanza 17: "Waking or asleep, /Thou of death must deem/Things more true and deep/Than we mortals dream,/..." ("There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio......."), Thus "Our (?humanity's?) sweetest songs....tell of saddest thought" whereas the skylark's "..notes flow in such a crystal stream." So, once again, many thanks.
I am not sure i agree or not with this aspect of the reading. Or perhaps I should say that I am not sure if it is a reading that I find sympathetic. But I should say that when it comes to the idea that poetry "can't be an unpremeditated art," Andre Breton would definitely disagree with you.
Thank you very much for this commentary. I am studying English literature in Spain and what a fantastic time to study anything, when you can access all this knowledge from any part of the world. I love this romantic period and the Victorian novels.
Thanks for this thought-provoking analysis. The Romantic era poets all seem to be interested in birds whose main characteristics to human minds is that they have beautiful calls or songs and are far more often heard than seen. As you say and as they claim, they are identifying themselves with these birds. I found this quote from Shelley's A Defence of Poetry. "A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why." I see the miscellaneous collection of similes in the Skylark poem, some of which seem to be better than others, as possibly analogous to the diverse interpretations of a poet's productions by their audience. "Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew" seems pretty bad, and "Like a Poet hidden In the light of thought" seems to preempt this interpretation. Identifying the poet with the bird and some of the poem's imagery with the poet's audience helps to bring out the contrast between the imagined incorporeal spirit and the physical entity that is a human (poet).
Excellent observation. And absolutely fabulous quotation from Shelley! The mythology of the nightingale has another (practical) advantage for the poet too, which is that is comforting to think that the bird sings into the "darkness" alone but is heard by those it doesn't know are listening. A comforting thought for an unloved poet writing into the void! Exactly Andrew! - That's one of the points I was making in the video - that the skylark is both "bodied" (bird) and "unbodied" (spirit), just as the good poet aims to be. The poet has to struggle with the contrast between these two states (which is harder for a human than a skylark as we are conscious of our corporeal, or bodily, selves in a way that the "blithe" spirit is not).
I agree very much with them, although I find your way of pointing them out to be more graceful than my own noticing. I have decided to call my first book of poems "Unbidden Hymns." Not because they have come to me without thought or craft, like the song of a bird, but because no one ever bid me, or asked me, to write them. Thanks for your work. It's like having a friend who gets into the same things you like. A respite from a weary world.
In my ignorance, I feel he longs for that freedom of flight and the bird song that seems without criticism. For me, the 'heavy winged bees' definitely smacks of envy🤣💐, he must be melancholy to doubt the sincerity of our mighty pollinators! Thanks... I really enjoy your work.
I think there's conflict - the symbolism of the bird's freedom has real appeal (as it still does). Thank you, Moira - I'm very pleased that you enjoy my videos.
Ah! - in Wordsworthian terms, recollected deep emotion: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind" (William Wordsworth, preface to 'Lyrical Ballads).
@@DrOctaviaCox Beautifully said! Truly, when inspiration strikes it flows so swiftly it is as if it was waiting, 'complete' and ready'in the mind'. Good ol'Wordsworth. 🥰💐
I am from Bangladesh. Student of English literature.. Your explaination of To Skylark is so good.I can understand it easily. Actually your expression is good,when you explain the poem and it's lines..
I'm in the middle of reading Romantic Outlaws and kind of obsessed with the lives of the Shelleys at the moment. 1820 was soon after the death of his daughter Clara and in the midst of a period of distance and alienation from his wife, not to mention that ruthless review in the Quarterly. So maybe another another narrative hovering beneath the surface of this poem is this kind of unexpressed lonely anguish, reflected in his attempt to grasp at the glories of the skylark and cling onto its tail feathers as it sweeps up and away from the earth, but his deeply felt misery and loneliness prevents him from rising upwards, so he sinks slowly back down lower and lower to earth, stanza by stanza, until he at last he falls back with a thud on this plaintive earthly all-too-human cry for attention and vindication and being witnessed by the literary world that seemed intent on rejecting him. Do check that book out, if you haven't already. Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. It's a dual biography of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecroft. And it's absolutely unputdownable, and it's the reason I find myself here watching your video right now :D
A beautiful reading, Jasmeen - and, yes, no doubt there are many narratives working through the poem. There are comparisons to be made with Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' and wanting to escape the weariness of the world through the figure of the bird: 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 (ll.22-7)
Our professor suggested to watch this video and wow. Listening you interpret it with such zeal felt good and made the poem more interesting for me. Thankyou. Lots of love. ❤️
What an enlightening, wonderful explanation of this poem. One thing is to understand it in a personal way, another to expound it so cleverly and interestingly. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for this great analysis i am in section of english language and literature in turkey and u saw this poem today in lesson i understood it better now
Good analysis, very lucid too. Sometimes my heart bleeds for Shelley the way he was treated by his critics . Factually I love the very first line of the poem " Hail to thee, blithe spirit" the way the poet addressing the bird from bottom of his heart is really touching and at the same time your comparison with Shakespeare's Hamlet too is remarkable. Very informative. Blessings Galore. ---- Naushad.
Really cool and useful explanation of a superb poem I've loved since high school. Just one random example of Shelley's brilliance is his use of "panted" [forth a flood, etc] when we might expect "poured" there. A college Prof. once noted the same sort of thing when Tennyson uses , in "Ulysses": "there GLOOM the dark, broad seas... (instead of "gleam"). I like your noting the ironies. Some I hadn't noticed! I like the idea of being "hidden in the *light* [of thought]"! Shelley must have been invisible, LOL!
Enjoyable, Thanks. Had a Professor of Literature at University---he, with 3 Lit. Phds., yes, 3 and working on a 4th---felt that at the ending of this poem, what Shelley underlying statement was: that the World should be in such a 'state of Zen', a 'state of Grace' that we though a Meditative Creation--Could live in a state-of-the-moment existence and have the Joy pined for in the poem. The Professor felt that Shelley expressed an unspoken Metaphysical, a Religious Euphoria of emptying oneself to live in the moment. Pardon dear Prof., if my meager detailing fails that what you expressed, over 50 years ago...but I have oft' kept that interpretation alive.
Shelley is such an amazing and interesting figure. Did you know he was a vegan? True that the word didn't exist in his time; he did use the word vegetarian and objected not only to the eating of animal flesh, but the treatment of animals on farms and wearing clothes made from animal products. A true free thinker and compassionate individual underlying his amazing ability as a poet.
A very informative and enjoyable analysis. For me Shelley is himself the subject of the poem. As you suggest though he acknowledges the difficuty of desribing the birds song in verse the lark for him symbolizes the ultimate poet he wishes to become. I personaly would rather read another Romantic John Clare who in one of several poems about the Larl brings it down to earth and deals with its physical attributes and not. as Shelley does. on its flight and song for of course Shelley only hears the song and does not see the actual bird.
Thanks for a great analysis. Is it possible that Shelley also seems to be interested in Coleridge's musings on the Poets' Imagination as an act of Creation and this is an overriding metaphor throughout... btw the bird absolutely does want to be listened to - it sings to communicate with other birds.
It's my pleasure. Yes, great point! Coleridge's was a key influence on Shelley's poetic development. If you're interested in this topic, then Sally West's book Coleridge and Shelley: Textual Engagement' (2007) is excellent, especially ch.4 in relation to 'To a Skylark'.
Thank you so much for your wonderful lectures, Dr. Cox. As a devotee of the English novel I have gained so much insight from your analyses. I’ve recently begun exploring poetry after a long period away from it and am particularly fond of the Romantics. I came upon another remarkable “bird” poem, “Ode to the Cuckoo” by the Scotsman Michael Bruce. Though it predates the poems of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats by about a generation, the later poems seem indebted to it for its theme of the unencumbered bird versus our more earthbound existence. Do you have some thoughts on this? Thanks again! I watch your videos regularly!
10:53 It seems to me, the contradiction in "unpremeditated art" is one common in the Romantics theorisings about poetry e.g. Wordsworth defining poetry as a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" but then also as "emotions recollected in tranquility" - this perhaps stemming from the binaristic view of art being either spontaneous (one preferred by the Romantics) or "artificial". Imho, the irony is applicable to a huge chunk of the Romantics' theory of art/poetry & their praxis
La Belle Dame Sans merci. The last line refers to his desire for the world to hear and then draw inspiration from the majestic skylarks ethereal sounds. They are a gift form God. P.S Are you actress Julianne Moore's daughter?
Is it too far fetched to think that the poet was admitting and emphasising the point that humans can never surpass the carefree nature and the beauty that is intrinsic to the skylark by making ironic statements deliberately and thereby accentuating his flaws as a human?(especially using the quote from Hamlet but opining that 'treasures found in books' doesn't compare to the bird's music simultaneously, as well as employing lines about wanting to be listened to)
Yes, absolutely! - Shelley emphasises his own failing to be as 'free' as the symbol of the skylark by bringing in, for instance, the allusion to Shakespeare, even whilst simultaneously claiming to want freedom from such earthly & human considerations. As you say, this seems to stress and accentuate his flaws as a human being.
![To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley [with text] - Read by Poet Arthur L Wood](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/d_Xq8FVc9-0/mqdefault.jpg)
Do you agree with my thoughts on the ironies within the poem?
Thank you so much for this - it really is thought-provoking. How much of the following would have occurred to me otherwise, I'm honestly not sure.
In Keats' "Nightingale" stanza 3, the poet wants to "Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget/What thou among the leaves hast never known.." and describes humanity's suffering from physical ailments. Shelley, on the other hand, refers in stanza 19 of "Skylark", to "Hate, and Pride, and Fear" (so to speak, man-made, rather than "natural", afflictions) - was this because Shelley was a more overt revolutionist than Keats?
We also get a reference to Hamlet (I think I've otherwise missed any reference to Hamlet) in stanza 17: "Waking or asleep,
/Thou of death must deem/Things more true and deep/Than we mortals dream,/..." ("There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio......."), Thus "Our (?humanity's?) sweetest songs....tell of saddest thought" whereas the skylark's "..notes flow in such a crystal stream."
So, once again, many thanks.
I am not sure i agree or not with this aspect of the reading. Or perhaps I should say that I am not sure if it is a reading that I find sympathetic. But I should say that when it comes to the idea that poetry "can't be an unpremeditated art," Andre Breton would definitely disagree with you.
ye..
Thank you very much for this commentary. I am studying English literature in Spain and what a fantastic time to study anything, when you can access all this knowledge from any part of the world. I love this romantic period and the Victorian novels.
You're very welcome!
As someone who gave up English Literature, after barely passing my O'Level, in 1979, you have rekindled my love of fine writing. Thank you.
I'm watching this for my graduation loved it..
Love from India.🙏😍
Pls help me
Thanks for this thought-provoking analysis.
The Romantic era poets all seem to be interested in birds whose main characteristics to human minds is that they have beautiful calls or songs and are far more often heard than seen. As you say and as they claim, they are identifying themselves with these birds. I found this quote from Shelley's A Defence of Poetry.
"A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why."
I see the miscellaneous collection of similes in the Skylark poem, some of which seem to be better than others, as possibly analogous to the diverse interpretations of a poet's productions by their audience. "Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew" seems pretty bad, and "Like a Poet hidden In the light of thought" seems to preempt this interpretation.
Identifying the poet with the bird and some of the poem's imagery with the poet's audience helps to bring out the contrast between the imagined incorporeal spirit and the physical entity that is a human (poet).
Excellent observation. And absolutely fabulous quotation from Shelley! The mythology of the nightingale has another (practical) advantage for the poet too, which is that is comforting to think that the bird sings into the "darkness" alone but is heard by those it doesn't know are listening. A comforting thought for an unloved poet writing into the void!
Exactly Andrew! - That's one of the points I was making in the video - that the skylark is both "bodied" (bird) and "unbodied" (spirit), just as the good poet aims to be. The poet has to struggle with the contrast between these two states (which is harder for a human than a skylark as we are conscious of our corporeal, or bodily, selves in a way that the "blithe" spirit is not).
@Andrew smith.. I need ur help in literature😥... Can u
I agree very much with them, although I find your way of pointing them out to be more graceful than my own noticing. I have decided to call my first book of poems "Unbidden Hymns." Not because they have come to me without thought or craft, like the song of a bird, but because no one ever bid me, or asked me, to write them. Thanks for your work. It's like having a friend who gets into the same things you like. A respite from a weary world.
In my ignorance, I feel he longs for that freedom of flight and the bird song that seems without criticism. For me, the 'heavy winged bees' definitely smacks of envy🤣💐, he must be melancholy to doubt the sincerity of our mighty pollinators! Thanks... I really enjoy your work.
I think there's conflict - the symbolism of the bird's freedom has real appeal (as it still does). Thank you, Moira - I'm very pleased that you enjoy my videos.
@@DrOctaviaCox Yes... I feel he is conflicted somehow. If I ever write poetry it's because of deep emotion which inspires my 'scribbling'.
Ah! - in Wordsworthian terms, recollected deep emotion: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind" (William Wordsworth, preface to 'Lyrical Ballads).
@@DrOctaviaCox Beautifully said! Truly, when inspiration strikes it flows so swiftly it is as if it was waiting, 'complete' and ready'in the mind'. Good ol'Wordsworth. 🥰💐
I am from Bangladesh. Student of English literature..
Your explaination of To Skylark is so good.I can understand it easily. Actually your expression is good,when you explain the poem and it's lines..
I'm in the middle of reading Romantic Outlaws and kind of obsessed with the lives of the Shelleys at the moment. 1820 was soon after the death of his daughter Clara and in the midst of a period of distance and alienation from his wife, not to mention that ruthless review in the Quarterly. So maybe another another narrative hovering beneath the surface of this poem is this kind of unexpressed lonely anguish, reflected in his attempt to grasp at the glories of the skylark and cling onto its tail feathers as it sweeps up and away from the earth, but his deeply felt misery and loneliness prevents him from rising upwards, so he sinks slowly back down lower and lower to earth, stanza by stanza, until he at last he falls back with a thud on this plaintive earthly all-too-human cry for attention and vindication and being witnessed by the literary world that seemed intent on rejecting him.
Do check that book out, if you haven't already. Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. It's a dual biography of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecroft. And it's absolutely unputdownable, and it's the reason I find myself here watching your video right now :D
A beautiful reading, Jasmeen - and, yes, no doubt there are many narratives working through the poem. There are comparisons to be made with Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' and wanting to escape the weariness of the world through the figure of the bird:
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
(ll.22-7)
And thanks for the recommendation! Octavia
@jasmeen Malhotra.. I need ur help in literature.. Can u😥
Our professor suggested to watch this video and wow. Listening you interpret it with such zeal felt good and made the poem more interesting for me. Thankyou. Lots of love. ❤️
What a lovely message to receive. Thank you. It's such a wonderful poem, it's very easy to be inspired analysing it! Octavia
Thanks. As a professor, I’d love to use a few of your excellently articulated points.
Wonderful ..God Bless.. Poet without a rival rightly remarked by Harold Bloom...
What an enlightening, wonderful explanation of this poem. One thing is to understand it in a personal way, another to expound it so cleverly and interestingly. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for this great analysis i am in section of english language and literature in turkey and u saw this poem today in lesson i understood it better now
Thank you for charming analogies. They are a treat! ❤
Good analysis, very lucid too.
Sometimes my heart bleeds for Shelley the way he was treated by his critics . Factually I love the very first line of the poem " Hail to thee, blithe spirit" the way the poet addressing the bird from bottom of his heart is really touching and at the same time your comparison with Shakespeare's Hamlet too is remarkable.
Very informative.
Blessings Galore.
---- Naushad.
Actually, I appreciate such kind of explanation. Well done Dr. Good luck
Good. I'm glad you found the explanation helpful. Octavia
Really cool and useful explanation of a superb poem I've loved since high school. Just one random example of Shelley's brilliance is his use of "panted" [forth a flood, etc] when we might expect "poured" there. A college Prof. once noted the same sort of thing when Tennyson uses , in "Ulysses": "there GLOOM the dark, broad seas... (instead of "gleam"). I like your noting the ironies. Some I hadn't noticed! I like the idea of being "hidden in the *light* [of thought]"! Shelley must have been invisible, LOL!
Do admire your clear explanations on this poem....great work.....
Thank you! I'm very pleased you found it helpful.
Enjoyable, Thanks. Had a Professor of Literature at University---he, with 3 Lit. Phds., yes, 3 and working on a 4th---felt that at the ending of this poem, what Shelley underlying statement was: that the World should be in such a 'state of Zen', a 'state of Grace' that we though a Meditative Creation--Could live in a state-of-the-moment existence and have the Joy pined for in the poem. The Professor felt that Shelley expressed an unspoken Metaphysical, a Religious Euphoria of emptying oneself to live in the moment. Pardon dear Prof., if my meager detailing fails that what you expressed, over 50 years ago...but I have oft' kept that interpretation alive.
Shelley is such an amazing and interesting figure. Did you know he was a vegan? True that the word didn't exist in his time; he did use the word vegetarian and objected not only to the eating of animal flesh, but the treatment of animals on farms and wearing clothes made from animal products. A true free thinker and compassionate individual underlying his amazing ability as a poet.
Thanks for sharing
My pleasure
A very informative and enjoyable analysis. For me Shelley is himself the subject of the poem. As you suggest though he acknowledges the difficuty of desribing the birds song in verse the lark for him symbolizes the ultimate poet he wishes to become. I personaly would rather read another Romantic John Clare who in one of several poems about the Larl brings it down to earth and deals with its physical attributes and not. as Shelley does. on its flight and song for of course Shelley only hears the song and does not see the actual bird.
Thanks for a great analysis. Is it possible that Shelley also seems to be interested in Coleridge's musings on the Poets' Imagination as an act of Creation and this is an overriding metaphor throughout... btw the bird absolutely does want to be listened to - it sings to communicate with other birds.
It's my pleasure. Yes, great point! Coleridge's was a key influence on Shelley's poetic development. If you're interested in this topic, then Sally West's book Coleridge and Shelley: Textual Engagement' (2007) is excellent, especially ch.4 in relation to 'To a Skylark'.
Do let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit! 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Such a beautiful poem.
@@DrOctaviaCox 😍😍
Of course I powerfully agree
Thank you
Thank you so much for your wonderful lectures, Dr. Cox. As a devotee of the English novel I have gained so much insight from your analyses. I’ve recently begun exploring poetry after a long period away from it and am particularly fond of the Romantics. I came upon another remarkable “bird” poem, “Ode to the Cuckoo” by the Scotsman Michael Bruce. Though it predates the poems of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats by about a generation, the later poems seem indebted to it for its theme of the unencumbered bird versus our more earthbound existence. Do you have some thoughts on this?
Thanks again! I watch your videos regularly!
Great explanantion
Glad it was helpful.
Thank you 🙏
Thank you
Wonderful 😍😍
Thank you. Wonderful material to work with!
@@DrOctaviaCox He's my favourite 😎😎
I can guess so! Your name - Alastor - gives you away rather!
10:53 It seems to me, the contradiction in "unpremeditated art" is one common in the Romantics theorisings about poetry e.g. Wordsworth defining poetry as a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" but then also as "emotions recollected in tranquility" - this perhaps stemming from the binaristic view of art being either spontaneous (one preferred by the Romantics) or "artificial". Imho, the irony is applicable to a huge chunk of the Romantics' theory of art/poetry & their praxis
very detailed and interesting. Stay alive. 4.5.2021
La Belle Dame Sans merci. The last line refers to his desire for the world to hear and then draw inspiration from the majestic skylarks ethereal sounds. They are a gift form God. P.S Are you actress Julianne Moore's daughter?
Bravos Madam 29.6.2022 Mogadishu
super :)
Pretty sure that bird was actually saying, "Get off my grass!"😊
Is it too far fetched to think that the poet was admitting and emphasising the point that humans can never surpass the carefree nature and the beauty that is intrinsic to the skylark by making ironic statements deliberately and thereby accentuating his flaws as a human?(especially using the quote from Hamlet but opining that 'treasures found in books' doesn't compare to the bird's music simultaneously, as well as employing lines about wanting to be listened to)
Yes, absolutely! - Shelley emphasises his own failing to be as 'free' as the symbol of the skylark by bringing in, for instance, the allusion to Shakespeare, even whilst simultaneously claiming to want freedom from such earthly & human considerations. As you say, this seems to stress and accentuate his flaws as a human being.
@@DrOctaviaCox Thank you for the reply, Dr Octavia!
5 mins and you still ain't started