Page 159 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit

“To a Skylark”
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, pages 37-40

Vocabulary
blithe – happy, carefree
profuse – plentiful
unpremeditated – spontaneous
unbidden – not invited
aëreal – area
languor – laziness

1. Why does the skylark exceed the capacity of human language to describe its qualities or the
qualities of its song?

2. What is the poem’s meter and rhyme scheme? What does the meter of the fifth lines of each stanza
typify?

3. What prevents the speaker (and us) from singing as the skylark does?

4. Four stanzas of this poem begin with the word “Like.” To what does the speaker choose to compare
the skylark?

5. Stanzas eighteen, nineteen, and twenty shift focus from the skylark to human weakness. In your
own words, describe the human weaknesses the speaker addresses.

6. At the poem's end, does the speaker seem confident that his words can have the same effect on
future readers as the bird's pure song has upon him? Why or why not?

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