To the lark is one of the representative lyric poems of the English poet Shelley. Shelley and To the Lark vividly express the poet's yearning for light and pursuit of ideals through the image of lark. Lark is a kind of bird, which is shaped like a sparrow but slightly larger. It lives in the wilderness grassland, nests on the ground and is fond of flying high. It often rises from its "territory" and goes straight to the sky, screaming and flying higher and higher.

Because larks have this unique habit, they are often chosen as the object of eulogy by poets. However, different poets write larks with different feelings. For example, Wordsworth praised the lark for being loyal to the sky and home, while Shelley praised the lark for "going up and up again and flying into the sky", which not only did not miss home but also despised the ground. This lark image is not purely a lark in nature, but the poet's ideal self-image or the image carrier of the poet's ideal. In his poems, Shelley repeatedly said that he could not compare with the lark, and I didn't know how to approach its joy. In fact, poets and larks are similar in many aspects: they both pursue light, despise the ground and yearn for an ideal world. The only difference is that the poet painfully feels the huge gap between ideal and reality, which does not exist for larks. On the one hand, it is leaping and singing, and on the other hand, it is sour and bitter. In fact, the two are opposite and interlinked. Of the two, soaring is the dominant aspect.

From the whole tone of the poem, we can see that although Shelley felt the pain of the distant ideal, he still transcended sentimentality with a rising positive mood. This poem is very skillful in artistic expression, and the rhythm and words of the poem can be described as a perfect combination, which has always been praised.