To the Skylark

The poem takes the form of a lyric ballad made up of three stanzas. It follows an ABAB CC rhyme scheme, with four lines of alternating rhymes and a rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza. The lyrical ballad form is appropriate to the content of the poem, as the ballad is musical and much of the poem’s content is concerned with the singing of the skylark. What is more, both the poem’s speaker and the bird have forms of expression that are, in essence, melodious and musical in style, further deepening the affinity between the speaker and their subject, as well as the poem’s form and content.

The ballad form is typical of much of Wordsworth’s non-narrative poetry. This poem shares stylistic characteristics with much of his earlier (and more famous) lyric works.

The poem’s speaker uses a degree of anthropomorphism when depicting and addressing the skylark, meaning that they humanize the bird. The speaker’s manner of addressing the bird directly creates a sense of potential dialogue between them—or, at the very least, suggests that the bird can be spoken to in a way usually associated with human beings.