(a) What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Ans. The lines have been taken from the beautiful lyric “To a Skylark” by the great Romantic poet P. B. Shelley. With the help of a beautiful simile, here the poet makes an effort to bring home to the world the intense joyousness, ethereality, spontaneity and the intensity of the bird’s song.

The poet whose thoughts are flagged and who is constantly in a state of melancholy at the sight of suffering in the world is filled with amazement as to how any living thing can be so happy. The poet is puzzled to think that whether the skylark is a mere bird or a spirit of delight. To the poet the skylark stands for musical ecstasy. He is baffled by the spiritual quality of its music and the spontaneous profusion of its song, as it soars and sings and looses itself in the atmosphere of the upper air. In the lines quoted, Shelley wonders if the Skylark is a bird at all for nothing on the earth closely resembles the skylark. The melodious music flowing from the Skylark is so rich and spontaneous that it is much more pleasant and delightful even than the bright and lustrous rain drops falling from the clouds in the sun at the time of a rainbow in the sky. Shelley, by employing a series of beautiful images, conveys to the reader the idea that the music of the skylark is something bright, ethereal and ecstatic.