![]() ![]() “The Fish” begins simply “I caught a tremendous fish” - none of the coy coaxing of meaning freshwater poet-anglers love to engage in, feathering their flies and looping gossamer casts over the puddle-pages of Roget’s Thesaurus. The couplet is meant to be banal, summarizing, returning him to earth.įor the needs of one of her own poems, Elizabeth Bishop bettered that ending with a quiet refinement. He makes his mark, hits his height of pitch with that lark singing “hymns at heaven’s gate.” There’s no up to go to from here kings are beneath him. ![]() ![]() At its first “arising,” Shakespeare doesn’t spend his breath lifting the bird further rather, he presses it back down into its humble origin in “sullen earth” (the skylark builds its nest not aloft in a tree but in a hollow in the ground) - loading the spring that launches both the skylark’s famous soaring vertical display flight and its equally rare and renowned song sung while on the wing. The order of the phrasing is crucial here. That then I scorn to change my state with kings. Haply I think on thee, and then my state,įrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate įor thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, There’s a wisdom in ending with that image and in a question, but Shakespeare banks on a different flight song, crossing the finish line of Sonnet 29 “When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes”: ![]()
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