Ode to Nightingale - John Keats

Ode to Nightingale

 

                                                   (Click on the images for more poems)

        

       Ode to Nightingale is poem with eight stanzas. It is a kind of a process of a poet from reality to dream and dream to imagination and then again he comes into reality. Keats has not remembered whether the encounter of his with nightingale was dream or reality but he felt the beauty of music and fantasy.

My 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.

      The first stanza starts with the extreme pain of the heart of the poet. The heart of poet has pain and numbness and his senses are not supporting him. The senses of poet are out of his control because he is drunk. He has written this poem in painful period of his life as he says in the stanza that it is like “being too happy in thin happiness”.  When he hears the song, his pain is connected with the melodious sound of nightingale.

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 Provençal 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:

        In this stanza poet seems very disappointed and wants to leave this world which has given him an extreme pain. After hearing the song of nightingale he wants to drink a lot and in the stage of unconsciousness he will fade away in forest with the bird. He wants to escape from this world.

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.

      In this stanza he expresses the world and its miseries. The youth suffers in this world that youth leads towards paleness and then dies, as Keats himself was dying. In this world he does not want to live where love has no faith and it changes day by day from one to another.

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.

      Poet first wants to escape from this world by the help of wine but now he says that his power of imagination is enough for him to leave this world of harsh reality. He wants to fly on the chariot of his reality. He wants to live with birds in his dream.

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.

         In his imagination he felt the fragrance of beautiful flowers. In the world of his imagination he saw that near the place where he has seated, there are lots of flowers which rarely grow on the mountains. He saw hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine. He has smelled all the fragrances in his dreams. He was not able to see the flowers by smelling it he also saw the colours of the flowers.

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.

           In this stanza poet describes the concept of salvation and physical death. He says that if he dies by listening this song it will be the death of ease.  He will be released from all the pains of the world. His breath is connected with the song of bird and he is in love with this easeful death. He compares death with ecstasy.

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.

        In this stanza the bird talks about the immortality of bird and its song. He says that the bird will die after some years, but its song will remain in the sense of all for many years and alo in this nature and trees. The song will remain alive as nightingale. He says the soul will left the body but the memory and senses will be there forever. He projects the tragedy of human life and how the world is surrounded by the concept of death.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll 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?

            The word “Forlorn” rings like the bell and breaks the imagination of the poet. The poet is back from the world of imagination and from the company of bird and now he is with himself. The poet is not able to decide whether it was a dream or his real vision? He is confused but also satisfied.