Richard Holmes, i hans bog Shelley: The Pursuit:
Those celebrated late Italian lyrics – ‘To a Skylark’, ‘The Cloud’, ‘To Jane’, ‘When the Lamp is Shattered’ – which subsequently established his reputation among a sentimental Victorian reading public, and among generation after generation of schoolchildren, were never of serious concern to Shelley. For the most part they were products of periods of depression and inactivity, haphazard acts of inattention when the main work could not be pushed forward.