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Commentary
Upon reading this poem, I can feel the desire for freedom. Through this poem, I believe the poet, Gerald Hopkins was trying to portray how free the human spirit can be outside the corporeal body. He especially uses diction, imagery, and metaphor to communicate with the audience effectively, and I believe he succeeded in doing so.
As the poem progresses, Hopkins continues to use diction that creates an oscillating flow between high and low, wild and tame, life and death. The line "This in drudgery, day-laboring-out life’s age" explicitly defines the existence of man on earth while the next line "aloft" and "perch" describe elevation over the human "turf" or "stage." The poet easily shifts between the beauty and freedom depicted through the skylark with the anguish and fatality of imprisoned spirits who "droop deadly sometimes in their cells.
I thought Hopkins also masterfully portrays the human spirit through visual and auditory imagery. He allows the reader to feel the constraints of a "flesh-bound" life. Just as a wild, soaring songbird fading and encumbered forgets "his free fells," man has forgotten the salvation of spirit without the "babble" and labor of earthly life. The poem’s final tercet provides the ultimate implication that man’s incorporeal self finds freedom when released from the human form. Hopkins contends that when "uncumbered:" "Man’s spirit" feels no more trouble or loss "for his bones risen" than the earthly hill touched by "a rainbow." This comparison beautifully illustrates that the spirit freed through death suffers no more than the spirit being graced by the intangible.
The sonnet "The Caged Skylark" presents an image-rich metaphor that not only illustrates the relationship between the physical and spiritual existences of man, but also takes the reader soaring from what appears to be the heavens to the depths of the soul. Gerard Manley Hopkins achieves a powerful comparison that arouses age-old questions about life, mortality, and the everlasting life thereafter. Hopkins also creates his own verse, his own song that, through the transitional and powerful sonnet form, enthralls the reader into the inevitable journey of the spirit. Or, if you will, imprisons one with a song.
Anecdote
Everybody is bound to feel imprisoned in their daily lives. People carry on from day to day, burdened with responsibility and thinking how wonderful it would be to fly, to escape from the daily tasks and chores that await them. Although I am still young and have not yet fully felt the strains most adults may have to go through, the stress school life gave me was often so immense that I desired nothing more than to become the wind and be free of my body, free to roam around wherever I pleased.
For brief moments there was a place that helped me feel this sense of freedom.. In middle school, I would often go with my friends to amusement parks to ride the thrilling roller coasters that most of friends so dreaded. When my friends insisted that they just ride bumper cars and such mild escapades, I would cajole them into following me to the thrill of their lives.
Roller coasters have never failed to free me from my worries, burdens, and stress. I would suddenly become one with the wind, fly alongside the birds and feel no envy. In that brief moment I was no longer the “caged skylark” but a free one, in its most carefree state.
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