Cloudless Night

The poem directly describes the skylark flying on an evening when there is little cloud cover over the sky. In the sixth stanza Shelley writes, “All the earth and air / With thy voice is loud, / As, when night is bare, / From one lonely cloud / The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.” (26-30). This sets the scene for the rest of the poem. The skylark is portrayed as the dominant figure on an almost empty stage. This emphasizes the majesty of the bird. The cloudless night also evokes a sense of divine intercession, offering the human subject a fortuitous sense of clarity. The light from the moon, described in the preceding fifth stanza underscores this impression of encountering – through the skylark pitched against the cloudless night sky – an enchanted tranquility and totem of truth.

Palace tower

One setting in the poem that is only alluded...