How does Shelley idealize the skylark?
Or, Show how Shelley contrasts between an ideal and real.
Introduction: Idealization is one of the major imaginative faculties of the Romantics. As Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is the fast-growing intellectual poet, he has been able to express his ideas in his famous or acclaimed ode “To a Skylark” written and published in 1820 with the lyrical drama “Prometheus Unbound”.
Shelley contrasts between an ideal and real
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Background thoughts of the poet
- B. Shelley is a highly intellectual poet of the Romantic Revival. He had a great passion for reforming the world. He saw evils all around him. According to him, the world was full of corruption, oppression, social injustice, and tyrannies. Almost all of his poems are the expressions of his utter discontent with the existing social injustice. He sought ideal beauty, love, liberty, and dreamt of a golden world to liberate mankind from the state of suffering. As a true romantic poet, he expresses his ideas through the spontaneous singing bird skylark.
The idealization of the skylark
Throughout the poem “To a Skylark”, Shelley has idealized the skylark in different or sundry ways for the purpose of having a new pattern of society.
Recognition as a joyous or blithe spirit
At the very outset of the poem, the poet has welcomed or hailed the miniature singing bird not as a bird but as a spirit. It seems from such recognition that the poet means to say that the souls of the real world have been polluted on a deeper level. Since the world is packed up with all kinds of negative aspects, this real-world has lost its expediency for peaceful and ecstatic living. On the other hand, the world of the skylark is authentic because the bird sings very spontaneously.
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Thus, the poet declares that the world and activities of the skylark are selfless that is why it is ideal which can ensure a sustainable world of peace and happiness.
Through the series of comparison and contrast
The term idealization is quite impossible without comparing and contrasting. As a poet of having revolutionary zeal, Shelley’s comparing and contrasting technique possesses unique quality.
The prestige of the bird
Before limning the status of the skylark, the bard shows a surprise that he does not about detailed identification of the bird but it has the prestige of a humanitarian poet. As the poet works for the betterment of the livings, the skylark is no exception. Though the presence of the singing bird is not traced out, it scatters the message of peace, happiness, and beauty like the hidden poet, glow-worm or embowered rose and consoles the laden hearts of the princes who sing a love song in her bower..
Here in this comparison the poet also sorrowfully informs the world that the religious authority can be adulterated because of materialistic gains but the bird surpasses all kinds of fear and hope that are elements of the real world.
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 superiority of the song
The poet does not hesitate to mark the most prestigious institutions as being corrupted. The religious institutions have been futile that is why the choral hymns have lost their attraction and pure melody. The song of victory is not for humanity rather it is the practice of power and authority but the song of skylark is pure and laudable. So, the poet means to say that the song of the bird is for all like good governance of an ideal state.
Free from difficulties and deadly sins
The sharpest and striking contrast between Shelley’s idealism and the world’s realism has been recounted by skylark’s tension and sin free world. According to the poet, the skylark knows much more than human beings. It enjoys a deeper knowledge of the mystery of the earth. Human beings are haunted by their thoughts of past and future and pine for what is not. The sweet songs of human beings are those that tell of saddest thought. But the skylark is the embodiment of perennial joy and happiness.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound
Better than treasures
That in books are found
Conclusion
Now, therefore, it could be asserted that Shelley has limned his agony and pessimism through this spontaneous lyric. And at the same time, he has shown his optimism too for a new pattern of an ideal society by idealizing the very small unseen singing bird.
