a "song seraphically free/Of taint of personality". In the lark's song, the human "millions rejoice/For giving their one spirit voice". Yet there are those revered human lives, made substantial by trials and in loving the earth, which though themselves unsinging yet come forth as a song worthy to greet heaven. It rises in that pure song into the highest heavens and is maintained there, so that our soul rises with theirs "through self-forgetfulness divine", filling the skies, showering the world "from human stores", soaring nearer towards silence. Consciously or unconsciously, Meredith's theme expands upon the sonnet False Poets and True by Thomas Hood (1799-1845), addressed to William Wordsworth, and is of course in debt to Shelley's Ode To a Skylark. References External links English poems 1881 poems Poems about birds