"The Lark Ascending" is a poem of 122 lines by the English poet George Meredith about the song of the skylark. Siegfried Sassoon called it matchless of its kind, "a sustained lyric which never for a moment falls short of the effect aimed at, soars up and up with the song it imitates, and unites inspired spontaneity with a demonstration of effortless technical ingenuity... one has only to read the poem a few times to become aware of its perfection".[1]
The poem inspired the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams to write a musical work of the same name, which is now more widely known than the poem.
- ^ Siegfried Sassoon, Meredith (Constable, London 1948), pp. 163–64.