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William WordsworthA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The poem takes the form of a lyric ballad made up of three stanzas. It follows an ABAB CC rhyme scheme, with four lines of alternating rhymes and a rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza. The lyrical ballad form is appropriate to the content of the poem, as the ballad is musical and much of the poem’s content is concerned with the singing of the skylark. What is more, both the poem’s speaker and the bird have forms of expression that are, in essence, melodious and musical in style, further deepening the affinity between the speaker and their subject, as well as the poem’s form and content.
The ballad form is typical of much of Wordsworth’s non-narrative poetry. This poem shares stylistic characteristics with much of his earlier (and more famous) lyric works.
The poem’s speaker uses a degree of anthropomorphism when depicting and addressing the skylark, meaning that they humanize the bird. The speaker’s manner of addressing the bird directly creates a sense of potential dialogue between them—or, at the very least, suggests that the bird can be spoken to in a way usually associated with human beings.
By William Wordsworth
A Complaint
A Complaint
William Wordsworth
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
William Wordsworth
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth
Daffodils
Daffodils
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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
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Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
William Wordsworth
London, 1802
London, 1802
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Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
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My Heart Leaps Up
My Heart Leaps Up
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Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
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Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
William Wordsworth
She Was a Phantom of Delight
She Was a Phantom of Delight
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The Prelude
The Prelude
William Wordsworth
The Solitary Reaper
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much with Us
The World Is Too Much with Us
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We Are Seven
We Are Seven
William Wordsworth