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
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