Skylark : To a Skylark, (1) poem by Wordsworth (2) poem by Shelley.
... certainly did not believe that the skylark was a spirit and not a bird and so the whole conception of the poem is false, insincere, ethereal humbug and therefore not true poetry because poetry must be sincere. Such points of view are irrelevant. Shelley is not concerned with the real life of the high-born maiden or the poet any more than with the ornithology of the skylark or with other material things... whole he saw in order to yield place only to the ethereal and impalpable. As he heard the skylark and felt the subtle essence of light and beauty in its song, he felt too the call of the same essence of light and beauty elsewhere and it is the things behind which he felt that he compares to the hymn of the skylark—the essence of ideal light and beauty behind things mental, the poet and his hymn, behind... light is a main part of Shelley; excise that and the whole of Shelley is no longer there, there is only the ineffectual angel beating his wings in the void; excise it from the Skylark and the true whole of the Skylark is no longer there. 18 November 1934 Page 400 Swinburne I want to make a short series of notes according to some responses to great poetry—and what I am sending ...
... bring about the union of the mortal and the immortal, the terrestrial and the celestial is always his passion." Against a suggestion that Shelley's Skylark should be purged of the three or four stanzas where the "blithe spirit" which is the Skylark is likened to human and corporeal things, and that the poem should be "left winging between the rainbow and the lightnings and ignorant of anything... he saw in order to yield place only to the ethereal and impalpable. As he heard the skylark and felt the subtle essence of light and beauty in its song, he felt too the call of the same essence of light and beauty elsewhere and it is the things behind which he felt it that he compares to the hymn of the skylark - the essence of ideal light and beauty behind things mental, the poet and his hymns... light is a main part of Shelley; excise that and the whole of Shelley is no longer there, there is only the ineffectual angel beating his wings in the void; excise it from the Skylark and the true whole of the Skylark is no longer there." Page 132 As with Wordsworth, so with Shelley, the hope of mingling the Here and the Yonder was intense and concrete through Pantheism. As with ...
... feel you are Hamlet. When you read r, you see Achilles living and moving and you become Achilles. That is what I mean by creativeness. On the other hand, in Shelley’s Skylark there is no skylark at all. You do not become a skylark, – through that name the poet has only expressed his own ideas and feelings. Or take his line, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” It is very... created something. You see there that the "cart" is a real cart and man in it is a real man; and yet it is the "world-cart" and the "world-man" in it. Take Shelley’s Skylark or Keats's Nightingale. There you find that the Skylark and the Nightingale are nothing; they are only an occasion. It is the thoughts, the feelings and the images that rise in the poet's mind that you get when you read the ...
... read Homer, you are Achilles living and moving and you feel you have become Achilles. That is what I mean by creativeness. On the other hand, in Shelley's "Skylark", there is no skylark at all. You don't feel you have become one with the skylark. Through that poem, Shelley has only expressed his ideas and feelings. Take that line of his: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts ...
... The evanescent symmetries— From that meticulous potter's thumb. 57 After circling with slow deliberation at the middle height (nearer earth than sky), Stevens suddenly, skylark-wise, makes an ascent in the last two lines; a higher inspiration has seized and carried him, and we can merely gaze wonderingly at the phenomenon. Isolated short passages or single... in this spiritual quality, they must pall more and more and go the way of all flesh, not enjoy the soul's immortality. Keats by calling the nightingale 'immortal Bird' and Shelley by calling the skylark 'blithe Spirit' have thrown a challenge to common sense. A bird is but a bird and must share the mortality of the world; how, then, can a bird either be a spirit or be immortal? "There... people", Sri Aurobindo once wrote to a correspondent, "who thrill to Pope and find Keats and Shelley empty and misty... What the hell has 'a glowworm golden in a dell of dew to do with the song of the skylark? But that simply means they like things that are Page 312 intellectually clear and can't appreciate the imaginative connections which reveal what is deeper than the surface ...
... meanings of Pope are to them the height of poetry—the emotional and romantic suggestions of the Skylark or the Ode to the Nightingale unsatisfactory. How the devil, they ask, can a skylark be a spirit, not a bird? What the hell has "a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew" to do with the song of the skylark? They are unable to feel these things and say Pope would never have written in that incoherent ...
... extreme to what Marvell on the whole represents. A complete ideal comes in those two lines, very poetically worded. It is the same ideal that Words-worth embodies at the close of his lyric on the Skylark. The Skylark is a bird pictured by Wordsworth as enjoying "a privacy of glorious light" in the lofty ether where it wings and sings, but the poet makes it still no despiser of "the earth where cares abound... the local tree spoken of by Marvell — down below in the Marvellous green which balances the Mallarmean blue high above. Wordsworth puts the beautiful balance of extremes in the couplet calling the Skylark Type of the Wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home! I wonder if this couplet could apply also to the spirit of my lectures? But it would perhaps be ...
... meanings of Pope are to them the height of poetry—the emotional and romantic suggestions of the Skylark or the Ode to a Nightingale unsatisfactory. How the devil, they ask, can a skylark be a spirit, not a bird? What the hell has 'a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew' to do with the song of the skylark? They are unable to feel these things and say Pope would never have written in that incoherent i ...
... to be flat or heavy. It is obviously easier to be poetic when writing about a skylark than when writing about the attributes of the Brahman! But that does not mean that there is to be no thought or no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to 'philosophise'. Shelley wrote about the skylark, but he also wrote about the Brahman. "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass ...
... easier to be poetic when singing about a skylark than when one tries to weave a robe of verse to clothe the Page 144 attributes of the Brahman. But that does not mean that there is to be no thought or no spiritual thought or no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to philosophise. Shelley wrote about the skylark, but he also wrote about the Brahman ...
... heavy. It is obviously easier to be poetic when singing about a skylark than when one tries to weave a robe of verse to clothe the attributes of the Brahman! But that does not mean that there can be no spiritual thought or no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to philosophise. Shelley wrote about the skylark, but he also wrote about the Brahman. "Life, like a dome of ...
... obviously easier to be poetic when singing about a skylark than when one tries to weave a robe of verse to clothe the attributes of the Brahman. But that does not mean that there is to be no thought or no spiritual thought or no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to philosophise. Shelley wrote about the skylark, but he also wrote about the Brahman. Life ...
... classical sturdiness and unflawed and mature intuition of proportion and measure. It is another sort of kemal , very desirable in its daring and in its joy of profound creativity. If for Shelley a skylark coming from nature provides an occasion to pour out unpremeditated melodies, his inmost and intense most feelings and thoughts, in the manner of the nazul - aspect, in the case of Amal Kiran... belong to the urug - aspect; whereas a nature-bird becomes airy and insubstantial in the romanticist's imagination, a symbol-bird acquires vibrant substantiality in the mystic's vision. What the skylark merely yearns for, it is that which as a "boon of the Spirit's sight" the symbol-bird brings from its native regions beyond time and space, inaccessible to us. We might as well say that the ...
... its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep or wide or all these things together: to use the Vedic expression about fire, the divine messenger, it goes vast on its way to bring 10 To a Skylark. 11 One Word is too often Profaned. Page 32 the divine riches, and it has as corresponding language and rhythm. The Higher Thought has a strong tread often with bare... cannot say that his poetry, at his best, was more perfect poetry and that of Catullus less perfect. That renders futile many of the attempts at comparison like Arnold's comparison of Wordsworth' s Skylark with Shelley's. You may say that Milton was a greater poet than Blake, but there can always be people, not aesthetically insensitive, who would prefer Blake's lyrical work to Milton's grander ...
... Classical poet does, or the known in terms of the unknown as the visionary Romantic poet alone does, making ...sense a road to reach the intangible. 2 He has, in a way, to be like the skylark of Wordsworth: Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam — True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home! If he lives only in the visionary world and has no contact with the earth ...
... life's million moods. The artist has portrayed a very violent event, but the unquietude does not seem to touch him. The object is not swallowed up by the subject and vice versa. He has taken hold of a skylark to pour all his unsung melodies and yet remained the grand witness Purusha of the ancient Indian psychology, a dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in a ...
... irregular forms, I believe. 20 December 1936 The Ode What is meant by an ode? Is it another name for an invocation? No. It is a lyrical poem of some length on a single subject e.g. the Skylark (Shelley), Autumn (Keats), the Nativity (Birth of Christ) (Milton) working out a description or central idea on the subject. 14 June 1937 Lyric, Narrative, Epic I am having much difficulty ...
... iambic, the fault attributed to them will disappear. Even as it is, the trochaic metre in the hands of great poets like Milton, Shelley, Keats does not pall—I do not get tired of the melody of the Skylark . Swinburne's anapaestic rhythms, as in Dolores , are kept up for pages without difficulty with the most royal ease, without fatigue either to the writer or the reader. Both trochee and anapaest are ...
... otherwise the word is neutral enough to receive a variety of shades. And it is in consonance with the legitimate employment of it on a par with "skies" to designate the ethereal that Shelley says to his Skylark: The blue deep thou wingest... Both the words make a single description in our poem, showing two aspects of the same thing, just as the earlier phrase "immortal hand or eye" does. That phrase ...
... song-snatches, ranging from Prometheus Unbound to the fugitive yet unforgettable "I can give not what men call love." Perhaps the most unexpected and implicitly beautiful summary of it is in the Skylark . Oppressed by a sense of mortal finitude which serves as a bar against his spirit, condemned to care and piteous pining for "what is not", all his love and aspiration an exquisite pain, a cry of ...
... end We find our happiness, or not at all! Perhaps Wordsworth uttered the last word on his complex mysticism - though in a style more epigrammatic than mys-tic - when he apostrophised the Skylark: Type of the wise, who soar yet never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home. Page 129 ...
... Imagination, 231-2n -"I wandered lonely as a cloud" (The Daffodils), 169n., 232n . -"Laodamia", 231n -"She was a Phantom of delight", 232n -"Three years she Grew", 233n -"To a Skylark", 232n -(Poems Referring to the Period of Childhaod) -"Lucy Gray", 230n -"We Are Seven", 281n -Prelude, 234n World War, First, 228, 249 Wu Ch' ng- n, 133 YAJNAVALKYA, 5-6 ...
... Please answer. YAJNAVALKYA: I am ready, 0 King! Let me hear. KING: What is the light that man has? Y: The sun is man's light. ¹ Poems of Imaginations, "To a Skylark". Page 51 K: And when the sun has set? Y: The moon is his light. K: When the sun has set, when the moon has set, what light has man? Y: The fire is his ...
... conveys his import to other people by a figure of symbol which represents rather than is the experience. Kalidas can use the "Cloud" as a "messenger" and Shelley convey the poet's Truth through the "Skylark". The question how these symbols arise has been a great puzzle to poets, critics and even psychologists. The explanation of the creative activity of the poet offered by the psychologists by referring ...
... ibid., p. 120. 46. ibid., p. 123. 47. ibid. , p. 127. 48. ibid. , p. 127. 49. Cf. Shelley: Thou lovest—but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. ibid. a Skylark). Page 467 50. Savitri, p. 128. 51. ibid.., p. 135. 52. ibid., pp. 140-1. 53. ibid ...
... birds—the tawny eagle shouting his clangorous aspiration against the sun; the cruel shrike, his talons painted in murder; the murmuring dove robed in the pure and delicate hue of constancy: the inspired skylark with his matin-song descending like a rain of fire from the blushing bosom of the dawn. Nay the beasts too are not without their fine individualities: the fire-eyed lion, the creeping panther, the ...
... but different in their kind and source of inspiration is a different matter. Here it is a question of the perfection of the poetry, not of its greatness. In the valuation of whole poems Shelley's Skylark may be described as a greater poem than his brief and exquisite lyric—"I can give not what men call love"—because of its Page 69 greater range and power and constant flow of unsurpassable ...
... cannot say that his poetry, at his best, was more perfect poetry and that of Catullus less perfect. That renders futile many of the attempts at comparison like Arnold's comparison of Wordsworth's Skylark with Shelley's. You may say that Milton was a greater poet than Blake, but there can always be people, not aesthetically insensitive, who would prefer Blake's lyrical work to Milton's grander achievement ...
... and yet discovers in time's varied phenomena a play of gleam and gloom subtly suggesting the same ineffable Beauty. In that grand finale, the Page 63 nightingale and the skylark in Sarojini have for once turned eagle and shown a power to look the sun of spiritual truth in the face ! It is probable that with the passage of years she would have more often made such ...
... picture Shelley as a being who is entirely absorbed in the ethereal and who, when he touches the earthly, does so with a lesser poetry. Going by this idea, I once set out to purge his famous Ode to the Skylark of what struck me as comparatively grosser and hence unShelleyan ingredients so that the whole might be of one shimmering iridescent piece. Sri Aurobindo pulled me up short and in a masterly letter ...
... car of the one are more in love with the parts while those of the other are more enamoured of the ensemble." (p. 348-9) This is a far cry from Leavis's comparison of Shelley's Ode to a Skylark and Keats's Ode to a Nightingale in which he is all praise for the latter but fails to account for the enduring appeal of the former. Sethna can be as just and unerring in his co ...
... not put it together. But all poems cannot be said to pre-exist in the very form they take through that consciousness. There are works which are of one consistent shining tissue: e.g., Shelley's "Skylark". But some poems seem to vary in the texture of their parts. All the parts may be of equal artistic excellence and yet they may derive from different "planes" and cohere only in what I may term ...
... million moods. The artist has portrayed a very violent event, but the unquietude does not seem to touch him. The object is not swallowed up by the subject and vice versa. He has taken hold of a skylark to pour all his unsung melodies and yet remained the grand witness Purusha of the ancient Indian psychology, a dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in ...
... the afternoon to see Vidya and Divakar. So she can only say then, on the day itself. Page 219 November 20,1936 Your letter has made us all cheerful like the mysterious skylark—through our happiness that there are some mysteries beyond even you ! But a little help. Mrs. Sarcar practically declared she would come with Professor this evening for a little music. ...
... character of Kālidāsa's poetry from his epics, lyrics, and dramas, for they all abound in this quality unlike the writings of any other poet. In the words of Shelley, addressed as they were to a skylark in another context, one may perhaps significantly address this poet of unparalleled brilliance as follows: What thou art We know not; what is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there ...
... the Beloved – though it is an object of deep love – that has made this love intense, sweet and poignant, moving and overflowing. Such a longing for the far-off Beloved made Shelley restless. His 'Skylark' is the living idol of this longing. Shelley's object of love also is a Deity dwelling in a distant world: The desire of the moth for the Star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion ...
... –Tajurveda, 152 Venus, 297 Vidyapati, 156-7 Virgil, 73n. –Aeneid, 73n. WORDSWORTH, 51 –Poems if the Imagination, "To a Skylark", 51n. World War II, 13 YAJNAVALKYA, RISHI, 49-56, 58-9 Yama, 138-9 Yamuna, 148, 266, 286 Page 313 ...
... on high o'er vales and hills, 4 ¹ "It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free", Miscellaneous Sonnets. ² "She was a Phantom of delight," Poems if the Imagination, VIII. ³ "To a Skylark", Ibid., XXX. 4 "I wandered lonely as a dud," Ibid., XII. Page –232 Or, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.¹ Or else, this easy and ...
... not simply a description. And in Nishikanto's poem, "Gorurgadi" ("Bullock Cart"), the cart is real and the man in it is real, yet the cart is both a personal one and a world-cart. Take Shelley's "Skylark" and Keats' "Nightingale". The birds in either poem are nothing. It is the thoughts and feelings of the poets that have found expression and the birds tansmit those thoughts and feelings while remaining ...
... themes, and what a variety of approaches! The twelve great masters of style: Aeschylus and Dante: Dante and Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Blake: the poetry of the school of Dryden and Pope: Shelley's Skylark: Baudelaire's "vulgarity": Anatole France's "ironising": Walter de la Mare's Listeners: five kinds of poetic style: austerity in poetry: architectonics in poetic composition: "great" poetry and ...
... literally de profundis, a deep cavernous voice surging, spectral and yet sirenlike, out of the unfathomed underground abysses. The cry has nothing in it, very evidently, like the thrill of a skylark's throat. Something of the purer atmosphere of the heights and heavens we breathe in our second poem. We move no more here in the darker left-handed labyrinthine path, but swim in a lighter ...
... literally de prifundis, a deep cavernous voice surging, spectral and yet sirenlike, out of the unfathomed underground abysses. The cry has nothing in it, very evidently, like the thrill of a skylark's throat. Something of the purer atmosphere of the heights and heavens we breathe in our second poem. We move no more here in the darker left-handed labyrinthine path, but swim in a lighter clearer ...
... too has some link with Shelley—but Shelley of a more mature mood. An obvious clue is Sri Aurobindo's "flowers / In a sweet garden fresh with vernal showers", which seems to hark back to the famous Skylark's "Sound of vernal showers" and "Rain-awakened flowers" and "all that ever was / Joyous and clear and fresh..." The Fear of Death might be taken in general as an attempt to give body to Shelley's ...
... anism. It cannot be irrelevant to us. All talk of idealism, nobility, grandeur is considered to be mere eloquence about things insubstantial and has no basis in our immediate common experience. Skylarks, daffodils, green cottages only imply escapism from the struggle and harshness of existence. Not only that; it leads to pretentious emotions and syrupyness which must be washed out from our mental ...
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