Shelley "To a Skylark"
1. Why can't the poet define the skylark? How does the skylark exceed the capacity of human
language to describe its qualities or the qualities of its song?
2. What is the purpose of the similes that the speaker employs in place of direct definition? Do
they adequately describe the skylark?
3. What is the relationship between the skylark and physical nature? What is the source of the
skylark's song?
4. What prevents the speaker (and us) from singing as the skylark does? Why is the skylark's
song better than even the best productions of human genius, language, and emotion?
5. In what sense might this poem (like many other romantic lyric poems) be said to efface the
act of writing in favor of the spoken word? Why would a poet do that, whether consciously or
otherwise?
6. At the poem's end, does the speaker seem confident that his words can have the same effect
on future readers as the bird's pure song has upon him? Why or why not?
Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
Stanza 1
1) What state is the speaker in? Why? (be sure to look up “opiate”)
2) How does he characterize the bird’s singing?
Stanza 2
3) The speaker asks for “a draught of vintage” (wine) in this stanza. Why? What will it allow
him to do? (note the imagery connecting the wine to the earth)
4) What sound device do you notice in lines 15-17? What’s the effect of this?
Stanza 3
5) Why does the speaker wish to leave the human world? (look up “palsy”)
Stanza 4
6) What option of escape does the speaker consider in this stanza?
Stanza 5
7) What’s the setting of this stanza? Note as many words as possible that contribute to the
imagery Keats is painting.
8) Look up “embalmed” and give two meanings for it. What does Keats mean? What other
connotations influence the meaning of this stanza?
Stanza 6
9) What third option of escape does the speaker contemplate in this stanza?
Stanza 7
10) What does Keats mean in calling the nightingale “immortal bird”? Does the bird really
live forever?
11) Note the 3 references to different people hearing a nightingale’s song at different times
in history (the third is an allusion—look up this term in your glossary). What are they?
What is the fourth example (lines 68-70)?
Stanza 8
12) How does the poem respond to itself in the beginning of this stanza?
13) What happens to the speaker in this last stanza?
14) What happens to the bird and its song?
Comparison question (Tonight’s BLOG)
15) What does the nightingale mean to Keats? Is it the same as the Skylark is to Shelley?