ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Detailed explanation-2: -Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”

Detailed explanation-3: -In Shelley’s view, human songs lack the spontaneous joy which the bird’s song possesses, and consequently man fails to sing as rapturously as the bird. This is because man can never be truly happy. His joy of the present is shadowed by the memory, sad or sweet, of the past, and the fear of uncertainty about the future.

Detailed explanation-4: -Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts”-Explain. Ans: What Shelley wants to convey here is that, because of the dominance of sorrows in life-arising out of our mundane attachment to things-the songs, which refer to our sorrows, appeal to us most.

Detailed explanation-5: -The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a “blithe Spirit” rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full heart pours “profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” The skylark flies higher and higher, “like a cloud of fire” in the blue sky, singing as it flies.