16 pages • 32 minutes read
William WordsworthTo the Skylark
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1825A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form/Meter
The poem takes the form of a lyric ballad made up of three stanzas. It follows an ABAB CC rhyme scheme, with four lines of alternating rhymes and a rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza. The lyrical ballad form is appropriate to the content of the poem, as the ballad is musical and much of the poem’s content is concerned with the singing of the skylark. What is more, both the poem’s speaker and the bird have forms of expression that are, in essence, melodious and musical in style, further deepening the affinity between the speaker and their subject, as well as the poem’s form and content.
The ballad form is typical of much of Wordsworth’s non-narrative poetry. This poem shares stylistic characteristics with much of his earlier (and more famous) lyric works.
Anthropomorphism
The poem’s speaker uses a degree of anthropomorphism when depicting and addressing the skylark, meaning that they humanize the bird. The speaker’s manner of addressing the bird directly creates a sense of potential dialogue between them—or, at the very least, suggests that the bird can be spoken to in a way usually associated with human beings. The sense of intimacy and equality created by speaking to the bird instead of just about the bird suggests that the poem’s speaker feels very close to the natural world, that there is a special affinity that can exist between humans and animals.
Second, the speaker tends to regard the skylark’s situation and concerns in ways that mirror those of human beings. The speaker wonders if the skylark is wearied of the earth because of the “cares” (Line 2) that await it there, and interprets the skylark’s song as “love-prompted” (Line 8). This technique of depicting and interpreting the skylark in terms that could apply to a human being suggests a level of kinship between humans and animals, as if both share the same concerns and the same simple joys.
Allegory
In the poem, the symbolism of the skylark and the contrast between earth and sky functions allegorically. This means that in speaking about the bird’s situation and the way in which it can alternate between the freedom of flight and the familiar comforts of its nest, the speaker is also providing some insight into a situation faced by humans: Experiencing tension between the pull of freedom and the unknown, and the comforts and duties of what is domestic and familiar. And yet, in praising the way in which the skylark can reconcile the two by knowing how to “soar, but never roam” (Line 17), the speaker proposes a resolution to this potential conflict, suggesting that humans can—just like the skylark—enjoy a bit of both, so long as they know how to appreciate and reconcile both spheres of their existence.
Related Titles
By William Wordsworth
