(G) TEACH ME HALF THE GLADNESS
THAT THY BRAIN MUST KNOW,
SUCH HARMONIOUS MADNESS
FROM MY LIPS WOULD FLOW
THE WORLD SHOULD LISTEN THEN, AS I AM LISTENING NOW.

Ans. The lines have been taken from the beautiful lyric “To a Skylark” by the great Romantic poet P. B. Shelley. In these lines the poet unfolds his intense desire and lofty aspiration to get inspiration from the heavenly melodies of the Skylark.

Hearing the pure ecstatic music of the Skylark the poet feels that he has never heard such a flood of “rapture divine”. Its song seems to the poet to be an endless outpouring of delight, and the bird itself is an “unbodied joy”. He wishes that if the bird could communicate to the heart of the poet half of its joy, the poet would have then a fine frenzy of inspiration and would pour forth rapturous songs of melody. Then such a maddening music, sweet and delightful, would flow from his lips that he would hold the world, which is now indifferent to his songs, turning a deaf ear to his idealism and thoughts of reform and emancipation, spell-bound, as he himself is listening to the bird’s song with rapt attention. What Shelley means to say is that his awareness of the tragedy of human life makes it impossible for him to write poems of rapturous joys that could easily draw the attention of people. All that Shelley needs is the feeling of ecstasy which the Skylark experiences.