Summary

The first stanza of the poem addresses the skylark directly, although the bird is conflated with a spirit of nature as if it is something else besides an avian creature. The second stanza describes the skylark’s majestic flight. The bird is in full song while gliding upward towards the heavens. This is pitched against the backdrop of “golden lightning / Of the sunken sun” (11-12) in the third stanza. The reader is temporally situated in the fourth stanza: “The pale purple even / Melts around thy flight” writes Shelley, suggesting that it is evening as the bird momentarily vanishes from sight in the darkness. This leads into a lyrical reflection on the moon’s eminence. Brilliant moonbeams are depicted as the dusk merges with dawn. In the sixth stanza the poet describes the atmosphere filled with the song of the skylark amidst the moonlight.

The...