(b) Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Ans: The lines have been taken from the beautiful lyric “To a Skylark by the great Romantic poet P. B. Shelley. Here the poet touches upon the importance and the power of an imaginative poet in the life of distressed humanity.

The poet compares the Skylark hidden in the intense light of the sun to an inspired, sensitive poet; he sings sweet and melodious song spontaneously, living in the bright world of his own ideal and fills the sky like the poet who absorbed in his own great thoughts sings his poetry. And as a great poet’s songs are the spontaneous overflow of his thoughtful soul, in a similar way, the songs of the bird are too spontaneous as they are not sung at the command of somebody. These songs of the great poet, coming from his oppressed and distressed soul, are so stirring that they rouse the soul of mankind and move them to sympathies with those general hopes and fears of humanity which it had not formerly cared for. In this stanza, the poet too speaks of the power of poetry. Poetry can lift the veil from the hidden beauty of life and bind mankind in a beautiful chain of mutual sympathy and affection. This passage gives Shelley’s high conception of a poet.