Ans: The skylark in Shelley’s “To a Skylark” is a happy and joyful singing bird free from “the weariness, the fever and the fret” that are quite common in human life. In contrast to the joyful and happy life of the skylark, the life of human beings on the earth is sorrowful and miserable. Neither the past nor the future holds out any charm to human beings. The bird has no regret for the past, no longing for the future. Man is always unhappy because he is never satisfied with his lot. Man loves but his love brings bitterness when it is satisfied. But the bird does not know love’s satiety. Man is afraid of death. He has no clear idea of what is there after death. The bird has the knowledge of the mystery of life and death. The bird is a philosopher who has an insight into deeper things of life: “Waking or asleep,! Thou of death must deem/ Things more true and deep! Than we mortals dream,! Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?” Whereas the bird’s life is marked by “clear keen joyance”, the life of man is characterized by sorrow and misery. The miserable lot of human beings is given poignant expression in the following lines:
“We look before and’after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
