"Hail to the blithe spirit"

This line is quoted from Shelley's one of the greatest lyric poems, "To A Skylark"(1820).

              Here 'blithe' suggests joyful or full of happiness and 'spirit' indicates without any bodily existence. In this poem, the phrase "blithe spirit" is used by Shelley to address the divine spirit, skylark.

              Actually Shelley is the rebellion poet of the Romantic period. He does not like the mundane anguish and pain, and that's why he always wants to escape from this materialistic world and arrive in an imaginary world, made by himself, where these is no sign of sorrow, sufferings and depression. Though skylark is a famous song bird of England, but Shelley here imagines this birdnot as a mere bird of flesh and blood, but as a 'blithe spirit', an emblem of 'unbodied joy', who soars higher and higher and pours a rain of perfect melody upon the earth. To describe the bird as a divine one, the poet uses this phrase.