The Full Text of “The Caged Skylark”
1As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
2 Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells
3 That bird beyond the remembering his free fells
4This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
5Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
6 Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
7 Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
8Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
9Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
10Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
11 But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
12Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
13But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
14 For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
The Full Text of “The Caged Skylark”
1As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
2 Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells
3 That bird beyond the remembering his free fells
4This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
5Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
6 Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
7 Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
8Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
9Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
10Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
11 But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
12Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
13But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
14 For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
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“The Caged Skylark” Introduction
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"The Caged Skylark" is a sonnet written by Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1877, though it was not published until 1889, after his death. Hopkins was an English Roman Catholic priest whose writing is often marked by a deep interest in God and nature, and experimentation with poetic style, form, and meter. "The Caged Skylark" is an extended metaphor, in which the condition of an imprisoned skylark is compared to the condition of a soul in a body. While the first half of the sonnet considers the hardships of the soul's captivity in the body, the second half finds comfort in the Christian hope that the body and soul will exist in perfect harmony after death.
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“The Caged Skylark” Summary
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The speaker compares a skylark (a bird known for flying in strong winds) that has been caged, to a human soul, which also strives to climb to great heights but is imprisoned in a body. Neither the skylark nor the soul can remember the time when they could fly freely. Instead, their time is spent in hard, life-draining work. Despite their difficult conditions in a cage or on the earth, the skylark and the soul may still find moments of joy or relief in singing. This joy, though, will eventually fade as they remain stuck in their prisons, and the soul, like the skylark, will experience the oppressive sorrow of despair or the aggressive outbursts of fear and anger.
Though the skylark seems born for flight, it also must rest occasionally and can be heard chirping as it comes to settle in its nest. But unlike the cage, the wild nest belongs to the skylark, and is no prison.
The human soul, the speaker now reflects, will remain within the body when in heaven; but the soul will not be burdened by its returned-to-life bones, just as the delicate plants that surround a meadow are not burdened by a rainbow whose base comes to rest over the meadow.
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“The Caged Skylark” Themes
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Relationship Between the Body and the Soul
“The Caged Skylark” offers an extended meditation on the tension between the soul and the body, or, more specifically the way that the body limits and imprisons the soul. The soul is compared to a skylark, seemingly created to sing and soar, whereas the body is like a cage that constrains the soul. However, the poem also suggests that this contentious relationship between body and soul can be resolved through the Christian concept of the Resurrection. Body and soul, the poem argues, have the potential to exist in harmony after death, even though they are in conflict during life.
The poem begins by comparing the condition of a skylark in its cage to the condition of a human soul in a body. The skylark is described as “dare-gale.” In other words, the defining characteristic of the skylark is that it is a bird that daringly flies even in gale-force winds. It is meant for spectacular flight. This skylark, however, is “scanted in a dull cage.” It is constrained and cannot fly. The cage is a direct contradiction to the skylark’s natural flight. As the cage contradicts the skylark, so the body contradicts the soul. The speaker describes the soul as a “mounting spirit.” It too is meant to rise, to soar as the skylark does, but it too is caged. The spirit’s cage is the body, a “bone-house.” The caged experience is so complete, in fact, that the poem says in line 3 that the “bird” (meaning both the skylark and the soul) cannot even remember the freedom it had before it was caged.
The speaker then reflects on the way that, stuck in this state of being caged, one’s feelings towards life may fluctuate. The skylark, like the human spirit, will live with a range of responses to its imprisonment. The spirit, like the skylark, finds another way to express itself: singing. Its voice, its artistry, still give it a chance to soar. In this way, both soul and skylark may be able to realize their true nature and “sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells.” But in both cases, the reality of being caged reasserts itself, and the soaring eventually ends and gives way to the "droop" of despair or "bursts" of anger. At the end of the first stanza, the speaker seems resigned to the permanent cage that the body will always be to the soul, despite occasional bright moments.
However, sonnets often involve a "turn", or volta, in line 9, and "The Caged Skylark" follows this pattern. The speaker notes that in the wild, the skylark has not only the freedom to fly but also a nest to return home to. In this nest, as in a cage, the skylark does not fly and is still. Yet the poem notes that the experience of being in the nest is totally different from being in a cage, as the nest is both "wild" and "his." In other words, the nest offers a place to not fly, but in a way that is not at odds with the skylark's essential being.
By adding the nest to the extended metaphor of the skylark, the speaker indicates that the human soul will also find freedom and rest. Specifically, the soul's “wild nest” will be found in the resurrection of the body (the "bónes rísen") in the afterlife. Hopkins was a Catholic and so believed that after death, human beings receive a new body that no longer suffers from physical limitations and is instead in perfect harmony with the soul. Similarly, an uncaged skylark can fly as freely as it likes, but it does not fly endlessly. It returns to its nest to rest peacefully. The body itself, the poem suggests, is not the enemy of the soul—the limits of the body are. When those limits are removed in its resurrected form, it will no longer be the soul’s cage but will instead be its home.
The speaker compares this new relationship between body and soul to the relationship between a rainbow and “meadow-down,” the small plants around a meadow. This meadow-down experiences no weight whatsoever when a rainbow comes to rest on it. In its resurrected form, the body will no longer weigh down the soul, and the soul will not have to revolt against its limitations. This concluding image of a beautiful rainbow resting on a peaceful meadow makes it clear that body and soul can live harmoniously, if only after they’ve undergone the transformation of a Christian resurrection.
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Humanity's Connection to Nature
Through its central images of the natural world, ”The Caged Skylark” implies a deep and meaningful connection between human beings and nature. This theme is common throughout most of Hopkins’s poetry. Nature, as discussed in this poem, is the essential foundation of all creatures’ lives. It is the skylark’s true home, and it was the original home of human beings as well. By contrasting the natural world with the “drudgery” of modern human society, the poem suggests human beings are best able to understand themselves by understanding nature and by recovering their relation to it.
At the start of the poem, the skylark is in an obvious state of contradiction: it is a bird that cannot fly, because it is trapped in a cage. This is an important distinction from, say, a bird with a broken wing, because the cage represents a force that comes from outside of nature. Cages do not exist naturally but are instead made by human beings, which hints at the idea that human society and perhaps industry get in the way of nature.
What’s more, the poem goes on to suggest that humans don’t just hurt other creatures by interfering with nature; they hurt themselves, too. By subtly alluding to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the poem indicates that humans suffer because they’re disconnected from nature. In line 3, the speaker says that the “bird”—meaning the soul as well as the skylark—cannot remember “his free fells.” But “fells” here means both “hills” and “flesh.” The image thus refers not just to the land over which a skylark flies, but through the phrase "free fells" also refers to the natural state of freedom in which Christians believed human beings were originally created in the Garden of Eden. Furthermore, in the story of Adam and Eve, the two original humans "fall" from grace after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and pain, work, and fatigue are how God punishes humans for this first sin. The line about “day-laboring-out life’s age” seems to refer to this punishment. The “drudgery” of contemporary human life, the poem suggests, is unnatural; it is contrary to the free, natural condition human beings were created in. By alluding to the Garden of Eden, the poet implies both that human beings have a deep connection with nature and that they have now lost that connection. Nature was their original home, and they now live in exile from it, experiencing “fear or rage” instead of peace and harmony.
However, the poem concludes by suggesting that this vital connection to nature may not be lost forever. The image of the rainbow in the final stanza hints at the idea that someday (perhaps through the Christian concept of resurrection), humans might be able to return to a deeper connection with nature. The more humans can recover of their connection to nature, it seems, the more they can experience the harmony that exists between the rainbow and the meadow. Indeed, the poem itself is a vivid example of how examining the natural world can lead to a deeper understanding of human nature. By reflecting on the connection between human beings and the skylark, the speaker seems to come to new insights about the complex relationship between the human body and soul, and so the speaker’s own exploration demonstrates to readers how contemplating nature can be a path toward wisdom and self-awareness.
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Freedom through Art
Though the poem considers the human spirit to be imprisoned, like a skylark in a cage, it presents art as a way to find a degree of freedom within that confinement.
According to the poem, both the caged skylark and the human spirit are imprisoned and cannot live as they are meant to. Trapped in their respective cages, neither the skylark nor the human spirit can, literally or metaphorically, fly. Struggling against their confinement, they experience feelings of defeat and revolt. They will, therefore, alternatively “droop deadly” and “wring their barriers.”
Yet the speaker also notes that both the spirit and the skylark “sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells” even in the midst of their drudgery. In this way, the poem suggests the power of artistic expression to grant human beings a sense of peace and freedom. While it is specifically singing that grants a sense of freedom in the poem, song can be understood as being symbolic of artistic creation in general. The caged skylark experiences freedom by finding a way to fulfill its nature and soaring in song rather than flight. In the same way, the imprisoned poet can find freedom through writing poetry—with poetry closely related to song, a way to translate the music of the soul beyond the confines of the body. Indeed, the body, by participating in this expression, ceases to be a limitation and becomes instead part of the liberating act of art.
Of course, the poem makes clear that art only offers a temporary reprieve. Despite being able to produce the "sweetest, sweetest spells," the skylark and human will then inevitably fall sway again to the limitations imposed on them and experience anger or despair. Complete liberation, the speaker says, comes only in the afterlife. The freedom found in singing thus only offers a glimpse of the lasting freedom that will be found after this life, when the body and soul will no longer exist in tension.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Caged Skylark”
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Lines 1-2
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwellsThe opening two lines of “The Caged Skylark” establish the simile that the remainder of the poem explores as an extended metaphor. The premise of this simile can be summed up as: two entities, the skylark and the human soul, are meant to soar to spectacular heights but are instead trapped. The remainder of the poem considers the various consequences of their confinement and the ultimate hope for freedom.
Hopkins’ poetry is well known for its frequent use of repetitive syllables. In these first two lines, we find this repetition in high effect. From the start, the overlapping sounds can feel so crowded on top of one another that they feel trapped, in much the same way that the soul can feel trapped in the body. Since there is an overwhelming amount of repetition in these two lines, only the instances that contribute most prominently to the meaning of the lines will be selected. The description of the skylark as “dare-gale” includes the assonance of two long a’s. Meanwhile, the k of “skylark,” is alliteratively repeated by the hard c in “scanted." And both of those two sounds—the a and the k—are repeated again in the word “cage" at the end of the line. In this way, the very sounds associated with the skylark are themselves, like the skylark, contained in the word “cage." A similar effect can be seen in the way that the s at the start of “spirit” reemerges in “house,” which is the spirit’s cage.
In another way, though, the repetition of sounds quickens the pace especially of the first line, which seems to accelerate until it crashes into the final two syllables, both of which are stressed: “dull cage.” This final spondaic foot abruptly halts the speed of the line, as the cage itself stops the swift movements of the skylark.
In addition to the sounds they contribute, the words themselves convey a complex relation of meanings. While “scanted” is a verb that can mean "to provide for meagerly even to the point of neglect," it is more commonly used as an adjective and would mean "rare or in poor supply." In this way, the skylark, because it is “scanted,” is made into a poor, meager version of itself, but it is also neglected and left to suffer its terrible conditions alone.
There are two prominent ways that the description of the spirit’s cage connects to the description of the skylark’s. First, the spirit dwells in a “mean house.” Here, “mean” can be a synonym of “scant,” referring to the body's impoverished state and its inability to meet the needs of the spirit it houses. Second, the typical image of a birdcage includes thin bars that run from the top of the cage to its bottom. The “bone-house” description, then, also evokes the specific image of the rib cage—while the skylark's cage is a metaphor for the body, the poem here suggests that the similarity in fact may be more literal than it initially appears.
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Lines 3-4
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. -
Lines 5-6
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells, -
Lines 7-8
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage. -
Lines 9-11
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison. -
Lines 12-13
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd -
Lines 13-14
meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
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“The Caged Skylark” Symbols
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Caged Skylark
Simply put, the caged skylark is a symbol of the oppressive limitations of the body. In line 3, "free fells" can refer to the free flesh that human beings used to enjoy in the Garden of Eden. The reference is ultimately an allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve who lived in the Garden of Eden in harmony with nature and themselves. That state, according to the story, was lost when Adam and Eve were punished with work, suffering, and death after committing the first sin. The cage, therefore, is the symbol of the body as the soul's limitations.
The caged skylark is, however, also a symbol of modern life. Because of its cage, the skylark cannot live as it is meant, nor can the spirit in its body. Around the time Hopkins wrote "The Caged Skylark," a new emphasis on the problematic nature of modern work had arisen in response to the Industrial Revolution. Work was still as difficult as before, but it now removed people from nature and put them in factories. The cage's metallic bars indicate as well the industrial association of the skylark's imprisonment. The poem's reflection on the problem of "day-labouring-out life's age" can thus be read as referring specifically to the demands of industrial or contemporary work.
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Free Skylark
Though the title of the poem focuses on the problem of the skylark in its cage, lines 9-11 explore the symbol of a free skylark. As the caged skylark symbolized human beings trapped by both their own limited bodies and the demands of modern life, the free skylark symbolizes human beings free from those limits and demands in the afterlife. According to the Christian understanding of the resurrection that takes place after death, human beings will have bodies, but those bodies will be perfect and without limits. The freedom found in such a transformation will be twofold. First, the body will no longer hold the soul back from all that it was meant to do and be. Second, because the body will have no needs, human beings will have no reason to work to meet the needs they do not have. Consequently, they will be doubly free to do what their spirits choose.
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Stage
The "stage," referenced in line 5, symbolizes the freedom of artistic creativity and its ability to transform even the limits of being human into the deep and powerful expressions of a person's soul. Being stuck on "turf" like human beings are, or on a "perch" like a caged skylark, does not impede the possibility of performing. The nature of captivity means that freedom is limited, but it does not mean that freedom is completely inaccessible. Instead, the poem suggests, freedom can be achieved momentarily through art, like when the skylark and the soul "sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells." Art always works within certain limitations and, in fact, is capable of incorporating those limitations into the act of artistic expression. For instance, even in this poem, the strict standards of a sonnet's form, meter, and rhyme scheme are used in its creation.
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Nest
The skylark's nest symbolizes the concept of true and free nature. The skylark in its nest is free and at home. It can stay and leave as it chooses, and it even built the nest for itself. The nest and the conditions it creates are, to put it simply, natural. It is made of nature with sticks and leaves. It is made in nature in a tree or a crack in a rock. It is even made by nature, since the skylark is a wild bird. The nest offers support without restriction, comfort without demand. It therefore strongly contrasts with the harsh metal bars of the cage and the life-exhausting requirements of industrial labor. The purpose of the nest as a symbol, then, is to show how good the natural order is and how wrong and violent the violation of it can be.
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“The Caged Skylark” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
"The Caged Skylark" overflows with alliteration, but it is used to different effect in different moments. Primarily, the specific sound being alliterated determines the effect it has. In the first line of the poem, the first instance of alliteration occurs with "skylark scanted." The sk sound is fast and harsh and creates the impression that the skylark is skittering around its cage. In line 6, the same s sound occurs but without the harsh k, and the effect is remarkably different. Because the sounds surrounding the s's are much softer, the overwhelming feeling is one of peace, and the line as a whole feels reflective and beautiful. In line 3, "free fells" is light and swift and creates the sense of airy freedom that the skylark seems to enjoy in its flight.
In tension with the softness of line 6 and swiftness of line 3, however, is the recurring alliteration of a heavy d in the poem. The best example of this alliteration is the phrase "droop deadly" in line 7. The d's strike each time like a dull thud. They create feelings of tedious boredom, an air of oppressive sadness or the sense of a spirit broken by endless work and despair. In "The Caged Skylark" alliteration is used to enhance the feeling that the meaning of the line or phrase is already attempting to create.
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Enjambment
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Epizeuxis
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Extended Metaphor
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Kenning
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Personification
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Polysyndeton
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Simile
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Synecdoche
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"The Caged Skylark" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- dare-gale
- skylark
- scanted
- mounting
- bone-house
- mean
- fells
- drudgery
- day-laboring-out
- spells
- wring
- sweet-fowl
- song-fowl
- flesh-bound
- uncumberèd
- meadow-down
- footing
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A word combination made up by Hopkins to describe having the characteristic of boldly flying in incredibly strong winds. It is a combination of the verb "to dare" and the noun "gale."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Caged Skylark”
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Form
"The Caged Skylark" is written in the form of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. According to this form, the poem must be 14 lines and is divided primarily into two sections. The first section is an octave, which spans lines 1-8 while the second is a sestet that runs from line 9 to 14. The octave can be subdivided into two quatrains, lines 1-4 and 5-8, while the sestet can be subdivided into two tercets, lines 9-11, 12-14.
These divisions and subdivisions can be used to follow the course of the poem's development. Each stanza is constituted by one sentence each and presents an idea that is then built on by the one that follows.
- The first quatrain introduces the premise of the poem: the comparison between the caged skylark and the soul "caged" in the body, and reflects on their common problem of confinement.
- The second stanza describes the way that art can offer temporary joy, but also how the despair of imprisonment reasserts itself.
- The first tercet of the sestet begins the sonnet's turn from problem to solution. In the first tercet, the speaker reflects on the behavior of a free skylark has a place where it can rest—its nest—which is not a prison, and which allows it to live as it is meant to.
- In the final tercet, the speaker finds that the same is true of the human being, which will find true freedom when its body is resurrected in the afterlife.
In this way, the form of the sonnet is used to structure the course and development of the sonnet's themes.
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Meter
In addition to Hopkins' often eccentric vocabulary, his experiments with meter are perhaps the most difficult aspect of his poetry to understand. Ordinarily, sonnets are supposed to follow the meter of iambic pentameter. This meter is known as an "accentual-syllabic" meter, meaning it has a specific number of accents and a specific number of syllables per line. Iambic pentameter has ten syllables per line, five of which are stressed, generally in the pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Hopkins, however, in an effort to recover the purely accentual meter common in Old English poetry—which ignored the total number of syllables and focused solely on the number of stressed syllables in a line—developed what he called "sprung rhythm." In Hopkins' sonnets, therefore, his focus is on the number of stresses in a line and not the total number of syllables.
Hopkins' development of sprung rhythm was his attempt to align poetry more closely with the patterns of natural speech. This means, however, that he also developed a sophisticated system of major and minor stresses and what he called "outriding" syllables, which occurs when two syllables of alike sound occur side by side and so either are not counted in the meter or only count as one syllable since they would typically be blended in natural speech. Because of the intense detail of his meter, Hopkins often described at least some of the meter of his own poems.
In his own notebook regarding the meter of "The Caged Skylark," Hopkins called it "falling paeonic, sprung and outriding." Paeonic meter is an ancient Greek form that combines syllables into groups of four, one of which is accented. Hopkins is able to achieve this paeonic meter with his system of major and minor stresses. For example, the first syllables of the poem, "As a dare-gale" can be seen to start with two unstressed syllables and end with two stressed syllables, like so: As a dare-gale. But the stress over "gale" is not as strong as the stress over "dare." As such, it would be considered unstressed in Hopkins' paeonic foot.
Ultimately, Hopkins' experiments with meter met with varied amounts of success. His effort to conform more closely to the nuances of natural speech seems to have been his priority in places, but his attempts to justify that priority left his explanations feeling convoluted. His adoption of a more flexible metrical pattern, however, allows him to control the pacing of his poem to the most minute of details, which allows him to accomplish a variety of effects. His use of outriding or "uncounted" syllables quickens the pace of a line, which can create a feeling of frenzy and panic or can lead to the feeling of a crashing halt when it runs up against two heavy accents. In the end, Hopkins' experiments can be seen as a forerunner of the free verse that rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, around the time when the majority of his work was posthumously published in 1889.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme in "The Caged Skylark" follows the rhyme scheme standard to the Italian sonnet. This is especially true of the octave, which runs ABBA ABBA. The rhyme scheme for the sestet in Italian sonnets can be more variable. In this poem, it runs CCD CCD.
Though Hopkins' rhyme scheme is fairly traditional, his experiments in meter as well as his extensive use of alliteration, assonance, and consonance tend to shift attention away from the rhyming that takes place at the end of a line. Because of this, the end rhymes become simply part of an overwhelming web of repetition within the poem.
Perhaps the most important use of end rhyme in the poem occurs in the final line of each of the two tercets. All of the other rhymes involve four words: there are four A rhymes, four B rhymes, and four C rhymes. So the D rhyme that closes the two tercets is the only singular rhyming pair in the poem, which draws a direct and stronger connection between those two words. The contrast between them sums up the contrast between the octave and the sestet, between the problem and the solution. Thus, even though "The Caged Skylark" conforms to the sonnet's traditional rhyme scheme, that rhyme scheme is still used to convey the particular meanings of this sonnet.
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“The Caged Skylark” Speaker
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The speaker of "The Caged Skylark" is ultimately anonymous, as the poem is presented in the form of direct speech or statement and does not offer a distanced reflection on who is speaking. What can be known about the speaker, therefore, can only come from what the poem itself implies. Thus, the speaker seems to be weary. Perhaps the best description, in fact, is "world weary." The speaker displays a feeling of bitterness and fatigue aimed at the hardship of life itself. In lines 1-8 the speaker seems to blame the body for these problems, implying that life's problems stem ultimately from the body's limitations. The brief allusion to the Garden of Eden locates those limitations as arising from the original sin of Adam and Eve, which led to their fall, expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the punishment that meant that the human body would suffer pain and want and would therefore have to engage ceaselessly in work. While the speaker sees the promise of temporary joy through art, but does not see that joy as anything more than temporary in a life otherwise filled with draining work, anger, and despair.
The speaker, however, is not interested in giving up, and instead turns to look for hope. This hope does not offer a solution to the hardship experienced in this life. Rather, it finds hope in the promise of relief that the Christian concept of the resurrection offers. In this way, the speaker is someone who finds support in faith but nevertheless remains pessimistic about the apparent potential of this life on Earth.
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“The Caged Skylark” Setting
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The setting of "The Caged Skylark" is alternatively a cage or the human body. While this latter setting may seem strange, the poem is primarily an examination of the body as the dwelling place of human life. In this respect, the poem offers a bleak reflection that laments the body as a type of prison. It can further be argued that the speaker is moved by the particular situation of the human body as it is impacted by the 19th century Industrial Revolution, which Hopkins in general viewed as separating humankind from nature even as it pushed people into hard, mechanical labor.
The poem's view of the body is , however, also biblical. The speaker's understanding of the body is framed first by its reference to the Garden of Eden and the explanation that the source of life's hardship and the moment when the body became a prison is the punishment brought on by Adam and Eve as a result of their first sin. Second, it is framed by the Christian hope in the resurrection, in which it was believed that the body will still be the dwelling of the soul, but one that is transformed and without limits. Corresponding with this latter understanding of the body is the wild nest in which the skylark can live its free, fulfilled life.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Caged Skylark”
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Literary Context
Poems about skylarks were not uncommon at the time when Hopkins was writing. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem called "To a Skylark" in 1820, 57 years before Hopkins composed "The Caged Skylark." In Shelley's poem, the speaker reflects on the skylark's flight and song and considers the connections between the skylark and the poet. It is also possible that Hopkins' phrase "day-laboring-out" was influenced by John Milton's 19th sonnet, in which the speaker asks, "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
Hopkins himself wrote another poem about a skylark called "The Sea and the Skylark." In this poem, too, the skylark represents the life-giving wildness of nature and is contrasted with the poor conditions of life that human beings have created for themselves. "The Caged Skylark" also connects to another of Hopkins' most famous works, "The Windhover," which is about a religious experience Hopkins had on a walk one morning when he saw a falcon flying in its early morning hunt. Through these poems it becomes clear that Hopkins felt a particular connection to nature and particularly to birds in flight. He saw in their movements and grace and freedom that evidently struck him deeply.
In terms of poetic style, Hopkins' sprung rhythm is derived from ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry, such as the Old English style used in Beowulf. Moreover, Hopkins' use of kenning was popular in Old English poetry as well. Finally, the paeonic meter that Hopkins uses to describe the pattern of "The Caged Skylark" was taken from ancient Greek verse and adapted to modern English.
Historical Context
Three historical factors can be highlighted for their influence on "The Caged Skylark."
First, Hopkins' vocation as a Roman Catholic priest clearly influenced the course of this poem, as the poem traces the problem of human hardship to Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden, and sees the end to human suffering as a function of resurrection in the after life. The problem is both understood and solved by specifically Catholic beliefs.
The second and third movements are intertwined. They are Romanticism and Industrialization. Hopkins wrote his poetry in the midst of the Romantic era, in which the concept of nature was developed in opposition to the problem of industrialization. Industry, which was rapidly changing the landscape and way of life in England in the mid 19th century, was seen by Romantic poets as cutting human beings off from nature. Nature, therefore, was thought of as the proper place for human beings. It was, ultimately, where they belonged, and it was also thought to be where they could find who they truly were. These convictions could perhaps best be summed up by the phrase: alienation from nature was alienation from the self. The problem of the caged skylark—cut off from its wild, natural home—was the problem that Romantics believed was being experienced by the modern, industrial human being.
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More “The Caged Skylark” Resources
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External Resources
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"Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent" by John Milton — Compare Hopkins' "The Caged Skylark" with Milton's "Sonnet 19."
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Recitation of "The Caged Skylark" — Hear a full the poem read aloud.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins' Biography — Learn more about Hopkins' life and the formation and development that influenced his poetry.
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Audio of a Skylark Singing — Hear the sound and energy of the skylark's song.
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"To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley — See the likenesses between Hopkins' "The Caged Skylark" and Shelley's "To a Skylark."
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In-depth Analysis of Meter — A detailed breakdown of the complex meter in "The Caged Skylark."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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