Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

▸ Stanza 1

 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.

Explanation: 

• A drowsy numbness pains my senses- a sleepy feeling of numbness dulls my senses. 
• Hemlock- this plant was used in the ancient world to produce a poisonous juice. When Sócrates was sentenced to death for ‘corrupting’ the youth of Athens, he was forced to drink a cup of hemlock.
• Lethe-wards- ‘into oblivion’. Lethe was a river of the lower world from which the dead drank to obtain forgetfulness of the past. 
• ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,’ meaning ‘it is because I am too happy in your singing that I feel this pain and sense of numbness, which sprang from the excess of gladness. It coveys the thought that our imperfect nature is not framed to bear that excess and plenty of joy, which are the properties of the soulless creatures of the woods. 
• Dryad- inferior deity dwelling in trees and forests. Here nightingale is called a dryad because it lives among the trees. 
• Melodious plot- groups of trees that echo the music of the nightingale. 

Here Keats addresses the nightingale with his words. He claims that its words' sweetness have made him feel such immense joy that his heart aches. Additionally, he experiences a type of sleepiness as if he had taken hemlock or opium. His heartache is not a result of envy for the bird’s fortunate lot. In actuality, the song's cheerful effect is to blame.

▸ Stanza 2

Oh, 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:

Explanation: 

• Vintage- old wine 
• Cool’d a long age- The poet wants to drink wine that has been mellowed by being kept underground for a number of years, and which has the flavour of flowers and grapes of the Sunny south of France, where the finest wine is made. Province is an ancient division of France, famous for its mediaeval troubadours (minstrels of love and chivalry). 
• Provencal song- sweet singer of southern France. 
• Sunburnt mirth- sunburnt people who are mirthful. 
• Hippocrene- ‘the fountain of the horse’ on Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses and said to have been produced by a blow from the hoof of the winged steed of Muses, Pegasus. The fountain was supposed to have had the power to inspire those that drank of it. Keats blends the thought of wine with that of this inspiring water. 
• ‘With beaded bubbles winking at the brim’- Keats wants to imbibe, rich and red wine with bubbles shining on the surface, so rich and red that even the mouth of the speaker should appear to be dyed with the wine.

The poet expresses his desire to be as content as the nightingale in this stanza. He deeply feels that the bird is excessively happy while he is excessively depressed. By consuming a strong wine made from grapes grown in the southern region of France, he hopes to share the bird's happiness. And he want to sip on a small amount of that wine in order to forget his current woes and lose himself in the sweetness of the nightingale's singing.

▸ Stanza 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.

Explanation: 

• ‘The fever, and the fret’- refers to Wordsworth’s ‘lines written above Tintern Abbey’: The fretful stir/ unprofitable and the fever of the world. 
• Palsy- description of the paralysis or extreme weakness, that afflicts man in old-age. 
• ‘Youth grows pale…’- Young people too become lean and worn out and die an early death. Keats here had in mind the death of his younger brother, Tom in the autumn of 1818. Better to die old or die young? 
• Leaden-eyed despairs- eyes heavy with sorrows. 8th line has 6 syllables per line. Iambic trimeter 
• ‘Where beauty…. Tomorrow.’- famous lines. The lot of mankind is misery , even for the best and the worst. The beauty is not going to last. 

Keats lists the things that make life miserable and those he wishes he could forget with a glass of wine. These include life's tiredness, heat, and anxiety; tragic events; terrible diseases that claim the lives of young people; suffering; and the fleeting nature of both death and beauty.

▸ Stanza 4
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.

Explanation:

• ‘Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards’- this line is inspired by Titans famous painting, Bacchus and Ariadne, in the National Gallery in which the chariot of Bacchus (the god of wine) is represented as being drawn by leopards, Keats admired this picture very much. In this line, Keats says that he is not going to seek exaltation by drinking wine.
• ‘But on the viewless wings of Poesy’- Poetry is to be the vehicle for transporting Keats beyond this weary world to the world of imagination and the song of the nightingale. 
• ‘Though the dull brain perplexes and retards’- Though reason (or pure intellect) binds the free-play of imagination. 
• ‘The Queen moon… by her starry fays’- This phrase is probably due to the association of the moon with Titania, Queen of fairies in a ‘Midsummer nights dream’. Titania was a classical episode for Diana and in the play she seems to combine the rank of the fairy queen and that of the moon goddess.
• ‘Through verdurous glooms and mossy ways’- through the leafy branches of trees, which shut out light and the zigzag openings through the moss covered trees.

The poet abandons the notion of drinking wine to block out the outside world by getting intoxicated. He does, however, add that he will go from this earth by flying to the nightingale on the wings of poetic imagination. The poet then envisions himself seated next to the nightingale in the tree. The moon and stars are bright in the dark sky, while it is pitch-black where he is seated with the nightingale. However, when there is a light breeze, the tree's leaves flap and a few moonbeams reach the area, illuminating it.

▸ Stanza 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.

Explanation:

• ‘I cannot see what flowers are at my feet’- The darkness in the garden will not allow the poet to see what flowers are growing on the ground or on the trees. This and the following lines suggest ‘perfumed darkness’ in which the poet cannot recognise the various flowers scents, but guesses at them. He gives us a mind picture of sensual perception, and then nightingale is for the moment forgotten. 
• Embalmed darkness- sweet-scented gloom. 
• Pastoral eglantine- eglantine is probably sweet-briar or honey suckle. It is called ‘pastoral’ because it is sung of over and over again in pastoral poetry. 
• Musk- rose- by this Keats means wild rose. 
• Dewy wine- liquid honey 
• ‘The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves’- a line that conveys the sense by means of its sound and music: on summer evenings, bees alight on the musk-rose to cull honey. 

The poet claims in the fifth stanza that he cannot see the flowers that are either under the tree or that hang from its branches. But he can tell that there are white hawthorns, pastoral eglantines, violets covered in leaves, and musk roses from the scent of the many flowers that are present in the various seasons. Additionally, he hears the humming of the bees.

▸ Stanza 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.

Explanation:

• Easeful death- death which brings ease (relief) from misery. 
• Rich to die- precious, pleasant 
• ‘Still wouldst thou sing’- you will always be singing. 
• ‘To thy high requiem become a sod’- your song will eventually be nothing but a mass for my soul, while my body lies buried beneath a turf of grass. I shall die and you will still be singing. 

The poet claims to be in a condition of tremendous calm and pleasure in the sixth stanza. He adds that he has previously expressed a desire to pass away peacefully. So that it may take his life peacefully, he has even lauded death in poetry. He continues by saying that he wants to pass away at the present moment so that he may die blissfully..

▸ Stanza 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.

Explanation: 

• ‘Thou was not born….thee down.’- Keats wants to die that means release from pain, it means forgetfulness of the ‘weariness,  the fever and the fret’ of life. It is no consolation to him that he will survive in his poetry. He will die, and the succeeding generations will tread upon his memory, even as some of his contemporaries did, but when the Nightingale dies, its song is taken up by its successors  for generations to come for all the time. Its quality is unalterable  elder able. I no hungry generations will trade it down.Who wants to die that means release from Team it means forgetfulness of the very nice the fever and the threat of life. It is no consolation to him that he will survive in his poetry. He will die, and the succeeding generations will tread upon his memory, even as some of his contemporaries did, but when the Nightingale dies, its song is taken up by its successors for generations to come for all the time. Its quality is unalterable and ‘no hungry generations’ will tread it down. Man exist as an individual the nightingale survives as the ‘light winged dryad of the trees.’
• Ruth- the widowed daughter in law of Naomi of Bethelehem who gleaned in the fields. Even Ruth, working with a heavy heart in the fields of Boaz, must have listened to the song of this very nightingale. 
• Alien corn- cornfields of a foreign land i.e. Judah. 
• ‘The same that oft-times……faery lands forlorn.’- The same song that often in days of old has unlocked magic casements which look out over the foam of perilous seas, in the solitary countries of faery. ‘Faery lands’ are the legendary countries of romance. Forlorn- abandoned. 

He describes the nightingale as a timeless bird who sings beautiful songs in this poem. From ancient times to the present, people of all kinds have heard the same song of the bird. Emperors, clowns, Bible character Ruth, and the princesses imprisoned in enchanted castles "in fairy lands forlorn" all heard it.

▸ Stanza 8

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?

Explanation:

• ‘To toll me back from thee to my soul self’- to recall me from the world of fancy to the actual world. 
• ‘The fancy cannot cheat so well’- the illusion produced for time by fancy or imagination, is after all short-lived. 
• ‘Do I wake or sleep’- now that the illusion produced by the songs of the Nightingale has vanished, and the song too has faded over the hills, and across the valley, the poet begins to rub his eyes in disbelief, and ask himself whether the song of the Nightingale was real, and he was really listening to it or whether he was dreaming.

The final stanza begins with the word 'forlorn' that closes the seventh stanza. The poet says that the word reminds him of his actual life and being, and brings him back to his "self". So he bids goodbye to the nightingale because imagination cannot keep a man from his real situation for a long time. Instantly he hears the bird's song going away from him. Then he hears it no more. He asks himself whether he is asleep or awake, "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?"

Keats’ Odes  

An Ode is a lyrical poem, typically one in the form of an address to a particular subject, written in varied or irregular metre. It is an Ancient Greek song performed at formal occasions, usually in praise of its subject. 

Keats wrote six odes in 1819. 

Ode to Nightingale: Introduction 

Theme: inevitability of death 

Major Themes: death, immortality, mortality, poetic imaginations 

According to kids, death is an inevitable occurrence. He presents it in both a favourable and unfavourable light. It promises the region of free eternity, but on the other hand, its presence weakens the human spirit. In addition, the author contrasts the Nightingale’s life and beautiful song. He believed that while life is brief a nightingale’s song is eternal. It will continue to be enjoyable even after his passing because it has been for centuries. Despite his constant engagement, he is unable to permanently reside in the lovely and wonderful realm of his imagination. As a result, he admits that imagination offers only a temporary source of Tranquility.

It is one of the five famous odes Keats composed in 1819. It was first published in July the same year, in Annals of the Fine Arts, and subsequently in Keats’s third and final publication, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems (1820).

Nightingale is a small bird best known for its powerful and melodious voice. Although the nightingale has a long history in literature, Keats' famous ode was as much influenced by a real-life nightingale as it was by earlier poetry.

Ode to Nightingale: Summary

A personal poem by Keats called "Ode to a Nightingale" chronicles his descent into the state of negative capability. Instead of exploring the themes of nature, transience, and mortality—the last of which is particularly significant to Keats—the poem rejects the positive pursuit of pleasure found in Keats' earlier poems. The nightingale that was mentioned goes through a kind of death but is not actually killed. Instead, the songbird can survive by singing, which is a fate that people cannot anticipate. The poem comes to a close with the recognition that happiness cannot stay and that death is an inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines losing the physical world and imagining himself dead as a "sod" that the nightingale sings over.

*"Negative capability" is the capacity of artists to pursue ideals of beauty, perfection and sublimity even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. The term, first used by John Keats in 1817, has been subsequently used by poets, philosophers and literary theorists to describe the ability to perceive and recognise truths beyond the reach the pressure and framework of logic or science. (Wiki)

Ode to Nightingale: Form and Meter 

It is a Horatian ode, named after the Roman poet Horace. A Horatian ode has a consistent stanza length and meter, while other kinds of odes do not.  Ode to the Nightingale is the longest and the most famous representation of the ode form of Keats. 

The poem has eight separate standards of the lines each and a meter of each line in the stands except for the eighth is iambic Pentameter. The eighth line is written in iambic trimester. The poem follows ABABCDECDE rhyme scheme throughout the piece.

Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English. In this, lines are ten syllables long and an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one. (Eg- da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) In the poem: ‘my SENSE as THOUGH of HEMlock I had DRUNK. 

Literary Devices: 

• Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds in the same line, like the sound of /th/ in ”That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees.
• Simile: “Forlorn! The very word is like a bell.” Forlorn compared to bell. 
• Enjambment: It refers to the continuation of a sentence without a buzz after the end of the line in a couplet or stanza for example: “ 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.” 
• Imagery: Keats uses images to present a vivid picture of his sad plight: “though of hemlock I had drunk”, “Past the near meadows.” 
• Assonance: It is the repetition of same role sounds in the same line of the poem. Example sound of /o/ in  “ in some melodious plot” and /i/ in “the voice I hear this passing night was heard.” 
• Metaphor: “for a beaker full of the warm south”, compares the liquid with the southern country weather. 
• Personification: “where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.” 
• Anaphora: it refers to the repetition of initial words of sentences in sequence, or in the whole stanza, or even the poem. Example: “where” in - “Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs!| Where youth grows pale and the spectre-thin and dies; | Where but to think is to be full of sorrow.”
• Apostrophe: it is the addressing of a usually absent person, or are usually personified thing rhetorically. Eg- “Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird.” 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

• A renowned romantic poet
• His father died during his childhood after which his mother remarried at once.
• Keats always remained emotionally close to his sister, Fanny, and his two brothers, George and Tom.
• Young Keats attended a school at Enfield, two miles away, that was run by John Clarke, whose son Charles Cowden Clarke encouraged Keats to write.
• Keats’ grandmother appointed Richard Abbey as their guardian after the death of the children's mother in 1810. John Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon in Edmonton in 1811 at Abbey's urging.
• In 1814, he left his apprenticeship and moved to London, where he served at Guy's and St. Thomas' hospitals as a dresser, or junior house surgeon. By this point, his literary tastes were crystallized, and from 1817 on, he focused solely on poetry. From that point until his untimely demise, he dedicated his remaining life to write poetry.
• After suffering from tuberculosis for a period, Keats breathed his last in Rome in 1821.
• Shelley wished an epitaph to be written on his tombstone after he dies. Therefore, keeping his wish “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” was engraved there. 
• PB Shelley, another Romantic poet, wrote a famous elegy, “Adonais” in Keats’ remembrance.

Keats’ Major works 

• On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816)
• Sleep and Poetry (1816)
• Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817)
• When I have fears that I may cease to be (1818) 
• Hyperion (1818)
• The Eve of St. Agnes (1819)
• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art (1819)
• La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad (1819)
• Ode to Psyche (1819)
• Ode to a Nightingale (1819)
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)
• Ode on Melancholy (1819)
• Ode on Indolence (1819)
• Lamia and Other Poems (1819)
• To Autumn (1819)
• The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1819)

John Keats’ Influence 

He was a pioneer of the second generation of romantic poets. The magnificence of his poem outlasted him and is still studies today. 

Letters: his letters serve as the primary source for information on both his life and the development of his poetry.

poetry, both his own and other people's.

His letters demonstrate significant contemplation along with a prompt, considerate, simple critique. Critics view them as best letters any English poet has ever written. They are spontaneous, casual, thoroughly pondered, and deeply felt. 

Writing style: Personification, alliteration, metaphor, assonance, consonance, sensual imagery. Connotative diction. 

Main Themes in his poetry: Pain & pleasure (ode of the nightingale, ode on the Grecian urn); Pleasure & Death (la belle dame sans merci, the eve of st. Agnes, Isabelle, pot of basil); joy & melancholy; life & death; separation & connection; the ideal & the real; dream & reality; transient sensation or passion & enduring art.