Anyone who has been entranced by a Skylark in the summer sky will appreciate this poem. In fact, anyone that appreciates poetry will like it, however, I didn’t like or appreciate this poem simply because I don’t much care for this style of poetry and I especially don’t care for picking apart hidden meanings in poems. This poem is obviously about a skylark, which I personally think is a really retarded thing to write a poem about. Anyhow, the skylark was Shelley’s inspiration for writing this poem and 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 and manages to turn this into an obviously Romantic poem. This desire is the “hidden meaning” of Shelley’s poem, which takes on a typical Romantic theme. This poem also deals with the idea that the poet has a far more advanced state of mind than that of an average person, this school of thought is conveyed here: “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.” Shelley views the skylark as some kind of mentor “Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine,” and he is using the bird’s spirit, which is closely compared to a god earlier in the poem, consecutively to show how the poet’s mind can teach other people ‘the truth’ about the world.
