Ode to a Nightingale

Ode to a nightingale

 

The poem

 

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 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:

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 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?

 

 

John Keats

John Keats, (born October 31, 1795, London, England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal States [Italy]), English Romantic lyric poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.

John Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his early death, and he was greatly admired in the Victorian Age. His influence can be seen in the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the Pre-Raphaelites, among others.

John Keats wrote sonnets, odes, and epics. All his greatest poetry was written in a single year, 1819: “Lamia,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” the great odes (“On Indolence,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “To Psyche,” “To a Nightingale,” “On Melancholy,” and “To Autumn”), and the two unfinished versions of an epic on Hyperion.

John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821 at the age of 25

 

Ode:  A lyric poem, typically one in the form of an address to a particular subject, written in varied or irregular meter. A classical poem of a kind originally meant to be sung.
Example:  "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, Other well-known odes include Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," Robert Creeley's "America," Bernadette Mayer's "Ode on Periods," and Robert Lowell's "Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket."

Pastoral: The pastoral poem presents an idealistic, almost Utopian, view of rural life. In these poems, shepherds and shepherdesses are innocent, pure, and free from corruption of the city or even the court. Some common topics of these poems were death, love, the mockery of politics, and the ideal life of the country.
Example: Christopher Marlowe's poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Structure of Traditional Odes

They have fixed rhyme pattern and a number of section. These sections are made of stanzas or group of rhyme pattern.  The English odes are free to form as they are irregular but they have a regular rhyme pattern.  The subject of Odes are in the form of praising people, places or events.  They focus on a particular person or place that could inspire their emotional feelings of the speaker.

• ·         They are address to some illusion.  And it is written to that illusion.
• ·         They are packed with poet’s emotions.
• ·         Theme would be very serious one.
• ·         The thoughts involved in the subject is clear and acceptable.

 

Summary

The poem starts with the expression of pain of the poet.  He compares the song of the nightingale to his unhappiness.  The poem deals with the wonder of life and death.  He brings out the miseries and sufferings of life.

Detail analysis of the poem

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.”

 

The poem starts with the action of the poet.  He is alone in the forest listening to the song of the nightingale.  His heart pains and he has become numb to the core.  He feels so drowsy with pain and feels like intoxicated as taken hemlock the toxic plant or opiates to forget himself.  The birds sings the music of summer among the overgrown green trees and numberless shadows.  He feels as he has fallen into the river of Lethe (a river in the ancient Greek mythological underworld that can make a person forget everything) he feels happy to hear the happy song of the bird.  He compares the Nightingale to Dryad a mythical tree spirit. 

Stanza 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:”

In this stanza he expresses that his mind longs for wine which had been stored for years under the earth. Draught of vintage is a kind of beer made with grapes. He wants to get intoxicated by the wine that tastes of flowers and songs of the folks, he longs to drink of bottle of wine that could take him to the southern lands, he wants to enjoy one full of water from the mythical Hippocrene spring that would motivate him to give more poetic imagination, the bubble would be like beadles play on this wine stained mouth. He could get drunk to forget is painful world and to escape with the Nightingale into the dark forest. He wants the type of beer made of grapes and from France which could give him more intoxication to him to forget his worries and to enjoy the song of the free bird.  He shows the happiness of the wine, dance and the world of the nightingale.  He wants to leave the word invisible and enters the world of nightingale in the forest.  His state of mind is quite visible here.

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.

In this situation the poet claims that he wants to be hidden and unseen among the leaves of the forest, in the world of the Nightingale. He would like to forget the never ending sorrows of the human world. The human world is full of weariness, the fever and the fret. Every human can hear others painful groaning.  The poet expresses how human suffer with palsy, sadness kills them, depressions turn them into aged and their eyes are heavy with laden.  Old age and death are inevitable in the human world.  Beauty and love never lasts in the human world.

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.

The poet wants to fly to the Nightingale.  He does not want to be in the human world.  He wants to follow the bird not by the chariot of Bacchus (the God of Wine) and his pards but through the wings of poetry.  Even the human mind might perplexes him and slows him down. He is with the Nightingale in his imagination, he describes the night.  It is soft and gentle, and the moon and the queen of sky seated on her throne guarded by stars.  But darkness surrounds the poet where he stands with a small light.  For the moon is hidden by the overgrown trees and the little light comes when the breeze blows the leaves

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.

In the fifth stanza the poet claims that he could not see the flowers in the forest under his feet, or any sweet smelling branches hang upon him.  A kind of total darkness covers him. He imagines what is going around him.  In the darkness around him he tries to see things.    He could not smell the fragrant plants.  It’s a spring time.  The forest shows its richness of spring.  It is full of grass, shrubbery and fruit trees. There are sweet briars, purple violets under the mulch of leaves, soon there will be musk rose with its pretty smell.  There will be a crowd of humming flies in the summer eve.

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.

The poet continues to description with a mood swing.  His mood changes when he listen the song of the Nightingale.  His pain increased when he think of the love which he has written and personified in his works.  He longs to die.  The time seems apt for him to leave his soul so the pain of the human sufferings would come to an end.  The song of the Nightingale is so ecstatic and seems to come out from its soul.  He is ready to die but the song of the bird would not stop for him or for his death. It would continue but it would be a wasted song for his lifeless ears.

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.

The painful expression continues as the poet says, the Nightingale is not born to die.  It is immortal.  There is no new generation of people tread the bird down.  The song which he hears in the passing night was the same one, as in the ancient days the emperors and clowns hear the same in their court.  There is a Biblical reference in the poem as the poet says the song has not changed, during the ancient Biblical times when Ruth (her mother - in -law stuck her after she was widowed) stood in the field of corn with sad heart and tears.  The same song would open the ships of perilous seas.  It the same song that would be heard in the forlorn lands which is the habitat of the fairies.

Stanza 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?

The word “forlorn” make the poet to feel lonely again.  So he prefers to say good bye to the Nightingale.  He wants to be himself.  He doesn’t want to be fooled or tricked by his own fancies.  He could not imagine to fly away with the bird. So he says Goodbye.  And he comes to the reality to accept the fact that the song of the bird would fade away as it fly past the meadows, over the hill side and near the stream.  He knows that the Nightingale would land in the next fly as it could fly past.  The poet wonders whether it was a vision or an illusion.  The song is no more there.  Is he awake or asleep? He could not realise the reality.

Thus the poem ends with the question.

Literary Devices

Popular Ode by John Keats.  Shares the sufferings of life, it was published in 1819.  It gives a deep study of life and death. The poet expresses his miseries and his imagination.

The poem brings out the main issues of human life, the sufferings and joy, and the relationship of life and death.  The poet makes a comparison between the natural world and the artificial imaginative world. Unfortunately he is drawn to imaginative world to get comfort.  But very soon he comes back to his real world where he realises the fact of life and practical world. 

Death, mortality and immortality, and imaginative world are the themes of the poem. Juxtaposition (two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.) is brought out in the song of the bird and the suffering of the human.  The poet feels the life is mortal and the song of the birth is immortal. He comforts himself with the nature for a shorter period of time, and comes back to accept the bitter truth of life.

Alliteration is the repletion of the consonant sounds in the same line.  /th/ in “That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees”,” beaded bubbles winking at the brim”, “fever and the fret”,

Simile is use to compare two things to brings its definition more clear. “Forlorn” compare to Bell. Again the mood of the speaker is compared to “drowsy numbness” full of “aches” and “pains”

Allusion is used to say something without mentioning it.  Hippocrene( Greek mythology a fountain for poetic inspiration)

Oxymoron is used for contradictory terms, “blushful Hippocrene.  A fountain could not be blushful.

Enjambment is the continuation of the sentence without pause to the next line. “My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk. Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.” 

Imagery is use to bring the picture of his narration to the readers with more clarity. “Past the near meadow, “fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves.” Murmuros haunt of flies is the auditory imagery.

Metaphor is used to compare and to make more effective the poets ideas. He compares liquid with the climate of the southern country in “for beaker full of the warm south”, “hungry generation.” “Deceiving elf” (he like to escape into the world of the bird) plaintive anthem (the song of the bird)

Personification is used to compare the living to the non-living. “Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes” he says the beauty as a living thing.  “The Queen moon is on her throne” “laden-eyed,” mid May’s eldest child” it refers to the climate changes.

Rhyme pattern is ABABCDECDE end Rhyme gives more melodious effects to the poem. For example “pains”, “drains”, “drunk”, “sunk”

Paradox is an absurd or contradictory statement which founded to be true. “Rich to die/easeful death”

Hyperbole exaggerated statements.  “Immortal bird”

Repetition “Adieu!”

Rhetorical question “Do I wake or sleep”

Thus the poem gives the idea of battle between the life and death, suffering and joy.