To a Skylark
A bird already too high to be seen pours out unpremeditated art from the blue deep, and the speaker runs through a series of failed comparisons: a poet hidden in the light of thought, a highborn maiden in a palace tower, a glow-worm in a dell of dew, a rose embowered in its own green leaves. None of them account for the sound, because everything human is shadowed by the memory of what has been and the fear of what will be. Written near Livorno in the summer of 1820, after an evening walk on which the Shelleys heard one among the myrtle hedges.
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Closest analogues
- 71% · 11 shared
- 71% · 11 shared
- 67% · 10 shared
- 63% · 10 shared
- 61% · 8 shared
- 59% · 10 shared