To Skylark 11 (English) Shelley

【Before reading poetry】

To the Skylark is one of Shelley's monumental masterpieces of lyric poetry. According to Mrs. Shelley, the poem was written on a dusk in the summer of 1820 when Shelley heard the lark whining while walking in the countryside of Laihang.

In the poet's pen, the lark is a symbol of joy, light, and beauty. Comparing the lark to a poet, to a girl in a deep boudoir, to a firefly, so that the beautiful image of the lark is vividly displayed in front of the reader. The poet compares the lark's song with the spring rain, the chorus at the wedding, and the triumphant song, highlighting the great power of the lark's song.

To the larks

(English) Shelley - translated by Jiang Feng

Hello, happy elves!

　　You never seem to be a bird,

　　From Heaven or The Neighbor of Heaven,

　　With a hearty music,

　　The art of not carving, pouring out your heartfelt heart.

Fly up, and fly high,

　　From the ground you jump up,

　　Like a cloud of fire,

　　Skimming the blue heart of heaven,

　　Always singing and flying, flying and singing.

The sun below the horizon,

　　Radiating a golden electric light,

　　In the clear sky, the clouds steamed,

　　You fly bathed in bright light,

　　Seemingly formless joy began with a rapid expedition.

Faint purple twilight,

　　Dissolve around your voyage,

　　Like a star in the daytime sky,

　　Although, invisible,

　　But you can hear your strong voice of joy—

That sharp and bright music,

　　A sword like silver starlight,

　　Its strong light,

　　Dimming in the morning light,

　　Until it is difficult to distinguish, but you can feel that it is in space.

The whole earth and the atmosphere,

　　Ringing through your gentle singing voice,

　　As if in the middle of a desolate night,

　　From behind a lonely cloud,

　　The bright moon shines out, and the clear light fills the universe.

We don't know what you are

　　What is most similar to you?

　　From the neon-like rainbow,

　　It is difficult to rain such a beautiful rain,

　　It can be compared with the music that descends with you.

Like a poet,

　　Be invisible in the brilliance of your thoughts.

　　Chanting improvised poems,

　　Until the sympathy of the whole world,

　　Awakened by unnoticed hopes and worries.

Like a noble maiden,

　　Living on the terrace of the deep palace,

　　In a moment of loneliness and unspeakable,

　　Dispel feelings of suffering from love,

　　Sweet songs like love overflow the boudoir.

Like a golden firefly,

　　In the valley of the condensed mountains,

　　Do not show the traces of travel,

　　Spread the crystalline streamer,

　　In the midst of flowers and herbs that block our view.

Like being her own green leaves

　　A rose in the shade,

　　Ravaged by the hot wind,

　　Until it's rich and fragrant

　　Indulge the reckless snitch with an excessive sweetness.

Sparkling meadows,

　　The sound of the spring rain sprinkling,

　　Buds that wake up after the rain,

　　It can be called clear and joyful,

　　Fresh everything, can't match your music.

Birds or elves,

　　What sweet thoughts are in your mind?

　　I've never heard of it,

　　Love or an ode to wine,

　　Being able to burst out such a divine stream of blissful music.

It's a chorus of praise for marriage,

　　Is it a triumphant song,

　　Compared to your music,

　　It's just empty pomp and circumstance,

　　One can perceive that there is always poverty in it.

What kind of object or event,

　　Is it the source of your song?

　　Fields, waves or mountains?

　　Air, land form?

　　Is it love for the same kind, or is it an insulation from pain?

With your clear and intense cheerfulness,

　　So that burnout will never appear,

　　The shadow of annoyance never comes

　　Close to your side,

　　You love, but you never know the sorrow of being overly loving.

Is it waking up or going to sleep,

　　Your understanding of death must be better than that

　　We mortals dream of it

　　More profound and true, otherwise

　　How does your music flow like a liquid crystal gushing out?

We look ahead, for the sake of

　　Things that do not exist worry about themselves,

　　Our most sincere laugh,

　　Also intertwined with a certain kind of distress,

　　Our most beautiful music is the tune that can best express mourning.

But even if we can abandon it

　　Hatred, arrogance and fear,

　　Even if we weren't born

　　Throw a tear,

　　We also don't know how to get close to your pleasure.

More joyful than all the rhythms,

　　More sweet and wonderful,

　　Than all the treasure houses in the book,

　　More abundant and rich,

　　This is the dusty you, your artistic skills.

Teach me half of your heart

　　It must be the joy of familiarity,

　　Harmony, fiery passion

　　It will flow out of my lips,

　　The whole world will be like me at this moment – listening with one ear.

Poetry appreciation

To the Lark is one of Shelley's monumental masterpieces of lyric poetry. While vividly depicting the Lark with his unique artistic ideas, he also wrote his own spiritual realm, aesthetic ideals and artistic ambitions with full passion.

In the poem, the poet uses romantic techniques to enthusiastically praise the lark. In the poet's pen, the lark is a symbol of joy, light, and beauty. The poet uses metaphors, analogies, and questions to depict the lark. He compares the lark to a poet, to a girl in a deep boudoir, to a firefly, so that the beautiful image of the lark is vividly displayed in front of the reader. The poet compares the lark's song with the spring rain, the chorus at the wedding, and the triumphant song, highlighting the great power of the lark's song. The rhythm of the poems is short, brisk, smooth and exciting, and the links between the sections are interlocked and advanced layer by layer, which is very artistically appealing.

This lark image in Shelley's poem is not purely a lark in nature, but an ideal self-image of the poet or an ideal image carrier of the poet. Poets and larks are similar in many ways: both seek light, despise the ground, and yearn for the ideal world. The difference is only that the poet painfully feels a huge gap between ideal and reality, and this gap does not exist for the lark. From the whole tone of the poem, it can be seen that although Shelley feels the pain of the ideal and distance, he still transcends sentimentality with a soaring positive mood. Poetry is very powerful in artistic expression, the text is concise, the rhythm is strong, the style is clear and bright, and the article has a majestic, wide-open and mellow and introverted momentum. Poetry is energetic and sharp, with a forward force.

Shelley attaches great importance to the social significance of art, believing that the creation of art is to promote the transformation of life according to the principles of justice and beauty. The poet renders noble sentiments in order to arouse the general agitation of the reader, to express the desire for virtue, to awaken the strong feelings of incompatibility with despicable desires. He said: "A great poem is an inexhaustible source of wisdom and pleasure that perpetuates it. "To the Lark embodies and accommodates almost all the main points of Shelley's poetic theory.

Twenty-one verses of the whole poem. Start with a compliment and end with an exclamation. The hierarchy is clear and the structure is rigorous. It can be roughly divided into six or seven small paragraphs.