On a Lark

I find the last lines of Shelley’s “Ode to a Skylark” to be slightly egotistical. He’s essentially saying “Give me the knowledge of your joy, and I will be a great poet that the world must hear”. It seems focused on what the poet can get out of the relationship with this unseen bird. It’s also kind of odd that he specifically says “Teach me” even just some of the happiness “thy brain must know”. These are words that describe thought and processes that can be learned, not emotion and feeling. This represents the human struggle between the dichotomy of the heart and the mind that the bird does not encounter. It knows and feels, equally, only joy. In earlier lines, the human emotion is besmirched by thought; the deepest joy is still affected by some long forgotten moment of sadness. Alternately, if we never felt pain, we still would not reach the heights of joy that the bird experiences. It has been my understanding in all things that if you have not felt the opposite experience, then your appreciation for the experience is not as acute. Someone who has never experienced the depths of despair has a different experience of euphoria than someone who has traversed through the darkness to emerge into the light. Overall, balance is necessary. Balance between joy and sadness, thought and emotion. Without balance, the “harmonious madness” is just madness, whether it’s someone becoming so focused on their misery that they harm others, or someone so caught up in chasing joy that they harm themselves.