"Ode to a Nightingale" Poem By John Keats

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

"Ode to a Nightingale" Poem By John Keats

John Keats was an English poet; born in London (31 October 1795- February 23, 1821); the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. John Keats is considered a poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

"Ode to a Nightingale" is a famous poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also in Hampstead. Keats' friend and housemate Charles Brown told later how in the summer of 1819 whilst they were living in Hampstead a nightingale built a nest in the garden. It inspired Keats to write this poignant work; a poem about how the imagination triumphs over a world blighted by disease and human frailty.

"Ode to a Nightingale," written by the Romantic poet John Keats, has 80 lines and it is the longest of Keats's odes (which include poems like "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode on Melancholy"). The "Ode to a Nightingale" is a regular ode. All eight stanzas have ten pentameter lines and a uniform rhyme scheme. Although the poem is regular in form, it leaves the impression of being a kind of rhapsody; Keats is allowing his thoughts and emotions free expression.

The poem focuses on the poet standing in a dark forest, listening to the beguiling and beautiful song of the nightingale bird. This provokes a deep and meandering meditation by the speaker on time, death, beauty, nature, and human suffering (something the speaker would very much like to escape!). At times, the speaker finds comfort in the nightingale's song and at one point even believes that poetry will bring the speaker metaphorically closer to the nightingale. By the end of the poem, however, the speaker seems to be an isolated figure—the nightingale flies away, and the speaker unsure of whether the whole experience has been "a vision" or a "waking dream."

"Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats is a meditation on the contrast between the ephemeral nature of human existence and the seemingly eternal realm represented by the nightingale's song. The most significant theme in ''Ode to a Nightingale'' is mortality. "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!" The poet is dealing with his fear of death and finds himself cheered by a nightingale's song. In the poem "Flora" is a Roman goddess of flowers, from which, presumably, wine may be made. The speaker then likens wine to the waters of “the blushful Hippocrene”, which is a fountain on Mount Helicon that's associated with the muses and, therefore, with inspiration.

In romantic poetry, the nightingale often represents the righteousness of nature. However, it also has some darker connotations, such as in John Keats's famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” In Keats's poem, the nightingale is still connected to the natural world, but it is also associated with death. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and, instead, explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being particularly relevant to Keats. The nightingale described experiences a type of death but does not actually die.

"The Nightingale" has a significant theme that natural is always better than artificial. The imagery of the nightingale soaring through the "drunken" joy of nature highlights the theme of immortality versus transience. The bird's song becomes a symbol of unending beauty, while the speaker grapples with his own mortality and the inevitable decay of life. The nightingale described experiences a type of death but does not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate that humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an inevitable part of life. 

(Taken from https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/john-keats/ode-to-a-nightingale)

My heart is in pain and my body feels numb and tired. I feel like I've drunk from the poisonous hemlock plant, or like I've just taken some kind of opiate drug and fallen into the waters of Lethe (the river in the ancient Greek mythological underworld that makes you forget everything). Nightingale, I'm not jealous of how happy you sound—I feel like this because I am too happy to hear you sing so freely and beautifully. You are like a Dryad—a mythical tree spirit—in your patch of overgrown greenery and shadows, singing summer's song with all your might.

I wish I had some vintage wine that has been stored for years deep in the belly of the earth, wine that tastes of flowers and the countryside, of dancing, folk singing, and happy sunshine! If I could drink a bottle of wine that would transport me to warmer southern lands, one full of water from the mythical Hippocrene spring that grants poetic inspiration. The bubbles would play on the surface of the glass and in my wine-stained mouth. I could get drunk, forget the world, and escape with you, Nightingale, away into the dark forest.

I long to disappear, to forget what you, Nightingale, have never had to know. You live untouched by all the exhaustion, sickness, and worry that come with being part of the human world, where people sit and listen to each other groan in pain, where disease and old age are inevitable, and where youth fades and dies. For human beings, even just to think is to feel suffering, heavy sadness, and pain. In the human world beauty never lasts, and neither does love.

I will fly far away from the human world and to you! I don't need to get a ride from Bacchus (the god of wine). No, I can fly on the wings of poetry instead—even if human consciousness might confuse me and slow me down. Nightingale, I'm already with you in my imagination! The night is gentle, and the moon, the queen of the sky, is sitting on her throne surrounded by her stars. But it's dark where I'm standing, with only a small amount of light making its way through the lush but gloomy trees and winding, moss-covered paths.

I can't see the flowers in the forest around me, nor tell what fragrant plants hang from the trees. The darkness surrounds me, and I try to imagine what is growing in the surrounding space. It's spring time, and the forest is full of grass, shrubbery, and fruit-trees. There are hawthorns and sweet briars, and purple violets hiding under the mulch of leaves on the forest floor. And the musk-rose, with its luxurious scent, will be here soon, crowded by the humming mass of flies in the summer evening.

My mood darkens as I listen to your song, Nightingale. I've often romanticized death, written about and personified it in poetry, half-longing to die myself. Right now seems like a good time to die, to end the pain of human suffering while listening to you, Nightingale, let your ecstatic song pour out from your soul. If I died, you'd go on singing, but your song would be wasted on my ears.

You weren't born to die like me, immortal Nightingale! You don't have new generations of people breathing down your neck. The song I hear is the same one heard many, many years ago in the time of emperors and court jesters. Perhaps it's even unchanged since Biblical times, when Ruth (who stuck by her mother-in-law after she herself was widowed) stood in fields of corn. It's the same song that would charm open the windows of ships on dangerous seas, the same song that could be heard in the forlorn lands where fairies dwell.

Thinking about the word "forlorn" makes me feel like I'm alone again! Goodbye, Nightingale. My imagination can't trick me into thinking I can really fly away with you. Goodbye, Goodbye! Your song grows quiet as you fly past the meadows, over the nearby stream, and up the hill-side. Now you're in the next valley. Was this whole experience real or an illusion? The nightingale's song has gone. Am I awake or asleep?

In the following the poem is being shared for the readers to indulge in the poetic excellence.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?