Articles and Commentaries by Aden Lee, Skylark Press Studio Shelley's Skylark | Page 13

The mark of an accomplished poem is its ability to make the inanimate words on a page seem lifelike, as Shelley has done in stanza 1 by using an alexandrine to emulate birdsong; the mark of a superb poem is to make the reader experience the content being described, as Shelley has done here. 15 What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? In stanza 15, Shelley uses a rhetorical technique known as anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, to imbue this stanza with interrogative emphasis. The word “what” is repeated five times across the stanza, as Shelley strives to discover the “objects” which induce the skylark’s joyous singing. Through anaphora, Shelley creates a series of lines which emphasize and enumerate the various “objects” which © Skylark Press Studio 2016 12/19