Ode to a Nightingale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ode to a Nightingale

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.

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 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:

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 grey 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.

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.

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 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?

Ode to a Nightingale is a poem by John Keats. Written in May, 1819, in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead. It was first published in 'Annals of the Fine Arts' in July of the same year. Referred to by critics of the time as "the longest and most personal of the odes," the poem describes Keats' journey into the state of Negative Capability. The poem explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being the most personal to Keats, making as he does a direct reference to the death in 1818 of his brother, Tom.

1 Brief analysis
2 Mortality
3 Synesthetic metaphor
4 Critical response
5 External links

[edit] Brief analysis

The ode consists of eight stanzas, each containing ten lines. The rhyme scheme (ababcdecde) has a link to the Sonnet form.The poet makes use of enjambement between stanzas two and three.

The opening lines of the poem make use of heavy vowel sounds to slow them down (eg. "heart," "aches," "drowsy" and "numbness"). Hemlock, the effects of which are used as a comparison to the symptoms Keats is now experiencing, was the state poison of Ancient Greece, which is another link to Keats' obsession with the myths and legends of that time. "Opiate" is another drug that Keats describes as having similar effects as the song of the nightingale.

The Hippocrene, referenced in the second stanza, is the legendary fountain of the muses, located on Mt. Helicon. Its inclusion in the poem shows the author's desire for inspiration.

Keats' opinion of the bird clearly changes as the text progresses. In the first stanza, Keats refers to it with awe, using phrases like "Light-winged Dryad of the trees," but by the seventh stanza refers to it simply as "bird." Indeed, in the final stanza Keats addresses the animal as "deceiving elf," implying irritation at the nightingale's hypnotic song for the effect it had on him. Similarly his views about the Nightingale's song change as the poem progresses, descriptions of it being a 'high requiem' giving way to "plaintive anthem" in the final stanza.'

Keats' confusion upon leaving the state of negative capability is clearly demonstrated in the closing lines of the poem: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?"

[edit] Mortality

Both the third and sixth stanzas contain references to mortality. The third stanza discusses the death of his brother, Tom, while the sixth expresses Keats' own fear of death. "Half in love with easeful death," found in the sixth stanza, shows his fear, not of death, but of a slow, painful one from Consumption (the illness was common in his family, and by this point he had already begun to show the earliest signs of the disease). "Soft names," on the following line, is almost like the communication between two lovers. "Seems it rich to die" demonstrates the level of ecstasy he is experiencing, that a man so much in love with life would welcome death. The stanza finishes on an anti-climax with the deliberately clumsy "sod."

[edit] Synesthetic metaphor

The poet makes use of synesthetic metaphor throughout the ode to demonstrate his confusion. For example, in the second stanza, the protagonist expresses a longing for "a draught of vintage." However the description of the taste he desires is not commonly associated with a beverage. He demands that it taste "of Flora and the country green," Flora being the Goddess of flowers. He also requests that it taste of "Dance, and Provençal (the adjectival form of the Provence region of France) song, and sunburnt mirth," implying that there is a wine he drank there that conjures vivid recollections of a holiday. In the fifth stanza he claims that he cannot see "what soft incense hangs upon the boughs." Of course, incense would be smelt, not seen; the implication here is that the hallucination is so vivid he would almost be able to see smells and sounds, if it were not for the lack of light.

[edit] Critical response

If the poem is escapist, it is only in that it is a flight from the misery and sickness of the world of men to the anudance and vigour of the world of nature.^{[citation needed]}
The longest and most personal of the odes.^{[citation needed]}