George Meredith by George Frederic Watts

"The Lark Ascending" is a poem of 122 lines by the English poet

George Meredith George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but he gradually established a reputation as a novelist. ''The Ord ...

about the song of the

skylark ''Alauda'' is a genus of larks found across much of Europe, Asia and in the mountains of north Africa, and one of the species (the Raso lark) endemic to the islet of Raso in the Cape Verde Islands. Further, at least two additional species are ...

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

called it matchless of its kind, "a sustained lyric which never for a moment falls short of the effect aimed at, soars up and up with the song it imitates, and unites inspired spontaneity with a demonstration of effortless technical ingenuity... one has only to read the poem a few times to become aware of its perfection". The poem inspired the English composer

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

to write a musical work of the same name, which is now more widely known than the poem.

Poem

Meredith's poem ''The Lark Ascending'' (1881) is a

hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' ...

paean A paean () is a song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. In classical antiquity, it is usually performed by a chorus, but some examples seem intended for an individual voice (monody). It comes from the Greek παιάν (also πα� ...

to the skylark and his song, written in rhyming

tetrameter In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. The particular foot can vary, as follows: * ''Anapestic tetrameter:'' ** "And the ''sheen'' of their ''spears'' was like ''stars'' on the ''sea''" (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacher ...

couplets in two long continuous sections. It first appeared in ''

The Fortnightly Review ''The Fortnightly Review'' was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; ...

'' for May 1881, at a time when (as Meredith wrote in March 1881 to

Cotter Morison James Augustus Cotter Morison (20 April 1832 – 26 February 1888), was an English essayist and historian, born in London. Early years His father, who had made a large fortune as the inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills", settled in Pari ...

) he was afflicted by "the dreadful curse of Verse". It was then included in his volume ''Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth'', which first appeared in an unsatisfactory edition in June 1883, and a month later was reprinted by Macmillan at the author's expense in a second issue with corrections.

in his commentary on the 1883 ''Poems'' ("one of the landmarks of 19th-Century poetry") observed, "to write of such a poem is to be reminded of its incomparable aloofness from the ploddings of the journeyman critic". ;Summary of themes It is a pastoral, devotional in feeling. The poem describes how "the press of hurried notes" run repeating, changing, trilling and ringing, and bring to our inner being a song of mirth and light like a fountain piercing the "shining tops of day". The joyfulness, purity and unrestrained delight of the "starry voice ascending" awakens "the best in us to him akin". The lark's song is the wine which lifts us with him in the golden cup, the valley of this world: the lark the woods and brooks, the creatures and the human line, the dance and the marriage of life within it. The hearts of men shall feel them better, shall feel them celestially, "as long as you crave nothing save the song". The poet's voice becomes choric. The human voice (the song proceeds) cannot express so sweetly what is inmost. Unlike the skylark, Man has not such a "song seraphically free/Of taint of personality". In the lark's song, the human "millions rejoice/For giving their one spirit voice". Yet there are those revered human lives, made substantial by trials and in loving the earth, which though themselves unsinging yet come forth as a song worthy to greet heaven. It rises in that pure song into the highest heavens and is maintained there, so that our soul rises with theirs "through self-forgetfulness divine", filling the skies, showering the world "from human stores", soaring nearer towards silence. Consciously or unconsciously, Meredith's theme expands upon the

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

''False Poets and True'' by

Thomas Hood Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 – 3 May 1845) was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as " The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for ''The London Magazine'', ''Athenaeum'', and ''Punch''. ...

(1799-1845), addressed to

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

,"Sonnets. IV: False Poets and True", in ''Poems by Thomas Hood'', 2 vols (Edward Moxon, London 1846), II
p. 39
(Google). and is of course in debt to Shelley's Ode ''

To a Skylark "To a Skylark" is a poem completed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in late June 1820 and published accompanying his lyrical drama '' Prometheus Unbound'' by Charles and James Collier in London. It was inspired by an evening walk in the country near L ...

''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lark Ascending, The English poems 1881 poems Poems about birds