The Caged Skylark by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins shares a strong message in his poem "The Caged Skylark." It is filled with pain many people feel on a daily basis. However, he shares that there is an end to the sorrow and where men should look to get past what may be keeping them caged. Through theme, structure and symbolism in "The Caged Skylark," Gerard Manley Hopkins reveals the highest potential men can reach with the help and grace of God on their side.

Hopkins uses strong imagery and symbolism in this poem to really put his message across to his audience. The first line begins with "As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage, man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house swells..." Immediately, the reader is filled with a depressing image of a bird regarded as beautiful in sight and in song trapped in a cage. As the poem develops, it isn't really a bird, but a spirit that is indeed keep from being beautiful. Hopkins is making the connection that man has an inner beauty that is trapped within flesh and

bone. Just as the skylark needs to fly and sing in the free air, so must a person's spirit. Further along the poem reads "both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells, yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage." These lines are painting an image that while being trapped in their respective cages, both can still be sweet and majestic; and likewise still be in pain and enraged almost to the pint of death. Moreover, a person can still feel great while trapped, but even more so will a person feel anger and sorrow without the presence of God in their life. Even with all the sorrow and helplessness that man's spirit might be in, Hopkins shares the positive image in the final lines of "The Caged Skylark." "Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, but uncumbered; meadow-down is not distressed for a rainbow footing it nor for his bones risen." Man will always be flesh- bound at best as it says in Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned; and fall short of God's glorious standard." However, if man relies on Jesus to rid them of sin, their spirit can sing free and forever as a skylark in the meadow, or to his on nest in the wild. While the imagery used is very strong in revealing God's help and promise to man, the structure of "The Caged Skylark" shares even more.

The structure and theme Hopkins chose to write "The Caged Skylark" carries just as much importance to the subject of the poem as the symbolism. There are four-teen lines total in his poem. It is broken down in the first eight lines, the middle three and the last three. The rhyme pattern follows an A-B-B-A, A-B-B-A scheme. For example, the first, fourth, fifth and eight lines rhyme with cage, age, stage and rage, while the rest rhyme with swells, fells, spells, and cells.