unseen

A footnote from the title of To A Skylark in the Wu anthology leads readers to Mary Shelley's comment that this is "one of the most beautiful of his (Percy Bysshe Shelley's) poems." If Shelley was struck by the rhyme and imagery, she is entitled to her praise, but if she was impressed by the originality of ideas, then I would have to say she did not read Ode to the West Wind (which was composed a year earlier) closely enough, for there is undeniable, extensive overlap.

The first line of the poem reads, "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" Immediately Shelley's words echoes Ode to the West Wind where the wind is referred to primarily as "spirit." The West Wind is also dubbed a "presence" and "unseen", both terms used in reference to the skylark. (lines 35,20) The stanza in which Shelley compares the skylark to a poet, writing, "Like a poet hidden/ In the light of thought,/ Singing hymns unbidden," is almost verbatim from the West Wind where Shelley compares the power of the wind to the power of the poet.

While I have seen overlap in poets' ideas from one poem to another on other occasions-take William Wordsworth's repeated allusions to wanderers or intimidating natural objects, I have not seen repetition of specific descriptive words and term to the extent which Shelley produced. I found the repetiton of metaphor detracted from the power of the poem because I was not being drawn in by new poetic insight. While I was impressed by Ode to the West Wind, I was not as impressed by To a Skylark, and this disparity was probably created by the order in which I read these two of Shelley's poems.