Ode to a Nightingale
Notes
One of the major themes of the Romantic era was the conflict between the claims of the Imagination and the claims of real life. This conflict is seen clearly in this earlier ode. It also touches on the idea of a proposed ‘valley of soul-making’ instead of the Christian ‘valley of tears’
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.
Feels both joy and pain– ambivalent response
Semantic field: pain
Semantic field: pleasure
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:
Moving into a world of imagination to escape the confusing joy-pain reality.
Associates wine with particular state he is seeking. Alcohol will get him into a half state so that he can join the nightingale’s world.
Semantic field of green: life
Green countryside, country dances outside in summer...idealistic images of never-ending life and happiness experienced in his imagination.
‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’: alliteration– the sounds duplicate bubbles breaking. Sparkling wine… the sounds bring the image to life and we can sense it for ourselves.
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.
His awareness of the real world brings him back to the reality of pain-joy. His thinking of the human condition intensifies the poet’s desire to escape the world.
‘Fade’ used in last line of stanza II and the first line of stanza III– ties them together… thoughts moved swiftly and fluidly. ‘Fade’ and ‘dissolve’- he wants to escape (possibly to get away from the illness of TB that Keats developed in real life)
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.
Turns to fantasy again– rejects wine in line 2. In line 3 he announces he will use the ‘viewless wings of Poesy’ to join the nightingale’s world. In choosing poesy, he is calling on poetry and Imagination…
Imagined world described as dark… the whole stanza is full of senses which heightens the whole experience.
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.
Because the poet cannot see through the darkness
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?
General points:
In this ode, Keats focuses on immediate sensations and emotions
At the start, the bird is represented as real. As the poem progresses, it becomes a symbol. Possible symbols are:
- freedom (a bird can fly away)
- pure joy
- the artist (bird’s voice = self expression)
- Imagination (a journey)
- the beauty of nature
- the ideal
Here are some fantastic notes that I believe I found on the internet some years ago, and appear not to exist anymore. I have reproduced them here: More notes on Ode to a Nightingale. If you find these notes elsewhere, please let me know and I will gladly reference them.
Ode to a Nightingale Worksheet
