The Skylark 1850 Samuel Palmer British Samuel Palmer, one of the greatest British etchers, engaged throughout his career with the poetry of John Milton. This pastoral idyll - in which a man accompanied by a dog, pauses at a gate to watch a bird soar into the early-morning sky - relates to a passage in Milton's L'Allegro of 1645 (lines 40-44): "To hear the lark begin his flight/ And singing startle the dull night,/ From his watch-towre in the skies/ Till the dappled dawn doth rise.". The Skylark 362684