JOHN KEATS

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

1

M Y heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

5

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

7

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

I would like to focus my short essay on the poet John Keats and his famous ode: “ Ode to a nightingale” (1819).

I have chosen this ode because of the symbolism that appears in it and, also, because the poem is complex due to the vocabulary, but the feelings that the author wants to transmit are easy to perceive.

Firstly, I would like to highlight some features which are very useful to understand this poem.

In this ode, we move from something very visual, easy to grasp to something more abstract. The ode goes from a concrete description (the singing of a bird) to an abstract one. The poet, throughout his meditation, is going to explore new ideas till he reaches the abstract, to be more precise, until he arrives at the deep concepts of the human values. In this ode, we have a contrast between the concrete and the abstract.

In the first stanza, we can find a paradox. The author starts the poem in pain (line 1) but the pain he feels is not sadness, it is happiness (line 5). Probably because of Keats wants to tell us that happiness sometimes gives us pain.

In lines 6-10, we find the bird. This is not a normal bird; it is not just a simple animal. The bird is going to be a symbol of something and, the readers have to discover what this bird and symbol mean. Perhaps, what the bird represents is freedom. The birds are strongly associated with flying, and flying means freedom.

Furthermore, there is something that we can observe in this part of the poem, that is, the “trip” that I have remarked before. The bird could be seen as the “concrete” and, the symbol that the bird represents could be understood as the “abstract”.

In the first stanza, I was talking about the bird, and now, in the second stanza I am going to refer to the wine, something which is more general. The protagonist of the poem is going to ask for wine, but a good wine. He wants to taste it, and Keats is going to describe how the wine tastes. The effects of wine (alcohol) make that the poet goes from “concrete” to “abstract” (lines 19-20). The alcohol makes forget the real word to reach an unreal or abstract one.

In the third stanza, the poet wants to go away (line 21). Keats carries the readers to a world in which everything is bad. The only things we can find in this world are: weariness, the fever, the fret (line 23).

In the fourth stanza, the poet makes allusion to the “Poesy” (line 33). The poesy is not clear; it is full of mysteries, as well as the darkness. Through poesy, the author arrives to the darkness of “his” imaginary forest. In this stanza, to be more concrete, in line 34 there is something that has attracted my interest. The brain of the poet does not work, it is curiously enough because our brain is always saying us what we have to do or not. I imagine that, what this sentence wants to transmit to us is that now it is time for the heart, for feelings.

In the fifth stanza, I consider that the poet is looking at the beautiful world through his imagination. Keats is going to talk about the changing of events.

Keats is going to talk about the “death” along the sixth stanza. It could be said that it is quite ironic. The images of death come to the poet in a very powerful way. From the perspective of the author, “death” not always means pain. Death can mean to rest, not to feel pain, not to be worried about things in life. Possibly, what the author wants to tell us is that the best moment to die is that moment in which we are happy.

In lines 59-60, the poet is talking again about the bird, and he is telling that when he dies, the bird will keep on singing, but the poet is not going to listen to it anymore because the ears of a dead person can not hear anything. In that way, that song will turn into a “requiem” for the poet.

The seventh stanza describes how the poet moves away little by little. The poet as a human must die (he is mortal) but he gives to the bird the valour of immortality. We know that the birds are mortal, so, once more, Keats is presenting us the bird as something different, and he is converting it into a symbol.

In the last stanza, the poet finally says goodbye to the bird. The singing of the bird becomes so similar to the singing of the water when it runs away to the sea. At the end, the song of the bird is like an “echo”. The encounter has been so brief and the poet doubts about the reality of this bird (lines 79-80).

In order to finish with my essay, I would like to add that the poet in his “trip” has discovered lots of things related to the “world” and “human nature”. It is a relation between the “world” and the situation of the poet inside the “nature”. John Keats was a romantic and the romantics gave a great importance to everything that had to do with Nature, Beauty and Truth. For this reason, the symbol of the bird could be interpreted as Beauty or Absolute Happiness.