Ode to a Nightingale

• Theme of Death, Time, and Impermanence

  • The speaker perceives "immortality" in the figure of the bird, a creature that seems unplagued by human anxiety about the inevitability of death.
  • The bird only appears immortal because its song is so beautiful that it seems like a small victory over time and death, temporarily distracting the speaker from his anxiety.
  • The speaker has a deep sense of loss and reassurance that everything fades with time.
  • Paradoxically "too happy" to hear the nightingale's song in the first stanza. This happiness is already over.
  • Time presses down on people, causing sickness and makes people age.
  • Nightingale doesn't offer lasting comfort.
  • Inevitability of life makes life itself no more than a kind of waking dream.
• Theme of Intoxication, Consciousness, and Isolation

  • The speaker wants to escape all the pressures and suffering that come with being human, drink and drugs seem to offer release.
  • Consciousness itself feels like a burden, it is exhausting and isolating.
  • The bird and the beauty of its song represent freedom from the limiting, isolating confines of the anxious human mind.
  • Speaker discusses a specific longing for alcohol, wanting a "draught of vintage" creating a link between alcohol and comfort.
  • Speaker longs for purity and beauty, this longing highlights on his focus on the bird's song.
  • Poem focuses on the speaker's personal awareness affected by the nightingale's singing.
  • Considers death as an alternative to intoxication.
  • People are alone, confined by the limits of their own minds. Dreaming allows some form of escape, suggesting brief glimpses of freedom.
• Theme of Art, Nature, and Beauty

  • Poem explores the relationship between two different types of beauty. The world of art created by humankind and the variety of life created by nature.
  • Speaker weighs up possible beauty of poetry, standing for all of art, against the overwhelming natural beauty of the nightingale's song.
  • "full-throated ease" presents nature as engaging in a creativity that is effortless and pure.
  • Bird song is perceived as a kind of eternal perfection, a beauty created by nature that humankind cannot match.
  • Human art is corrupted by interpersonal rivalry and competition.
  • The melody of the poem becomes sad and mournful as the nightingale flies away, it reminds the speaker of their own limitations.
• "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains // My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk..."

  • Speaker's heart hurts as if he'd drunk poison. Its lethality highlights on the power of nature to kill.
  • "hemlock" is the poison that the Greek philosopher Socrates took when he was put to death for corrupting the youth.
  • Speaker feels "numb" with the "ache" in his heart sounding almost pleasurable.
• "Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains // One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:"

  • "Lethe-wards" is a river in the Greek underworld, its waters inducing forgetfulness.
  • Speaker appears to be in a trance by the sublime, exploring themes of reality and imagination.
  • He feels as though he has drank some powerful drug, "opiate" that causes him to "sink" into some form of oblivion.
  • Opium is a powerful drug made from the poppy flower. Some critics suggest that Keats misused opium.
• "Singest of summer in full-throated ease."

  • "full-throated ease" highlights the beauty of the nightingale's song, emphasising that the beauty created by nature is effortless and pure.
  • Sibilance creates a hushed, almost whistling sound that mimics the sound of nature and the nightingale's song.
  • The stanza captures the speaker's desire to leave the world unseen, a reference to dying.
  • Image of "summer" might reflect the stages of life, highlighting on ideas of the inevitability of death despite Keats' young age.
• "O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been // Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth..."

  • Assonance of repeated vowel sounds shows the speaker's longing for intoxication, emphasises by the exclamation which suggests a sense of desperation.
  • Plosives further emphasise desperation.
  • "vintage" wine is made from grapes from the same harvest, the speaker wants the wine to start bubbling out of the ground.
  • "deep-delved earth" acts as a metaphorically giant wine cellar.
• "O for a beaker full of the warm South, // Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene..."

  • Assonance of vowel sounds reflects speaker's longing for intoxication.
  • Diacope of "full" emphasises the fullness of the imaginary wine.
  • Speaker wants to distill the earth down to its powerful, intoxicating essence.
  • "Hippocrene" is the fountain or mythical Greek spring, reinforces the idea of the beauty of nature.
  • Liquid from the "Hippocrene" is "blushful" because it is reddish like the colour of both wine and blush.
  • Plosives mimic the sound of the water.
• "Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget // What thou among the leaves hast never known..."

  • Fricatives create a distant feeling.
  • Creates a link between the perceived freedom of the nightingale and the bird's lack of a human consciousness. The bird will "never know" the hardships of human life.
  • Speaker dreams of "fading" out of the world and disappearing in a quiet way, wanting to forget the suffering of humankind and his anxiety.
  • Speaker reflects that this poem, or any art created by humankind, can never be as beautiful as the nightingale's song because it ignores the harsh reality of the human world.
• "Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;"

  • "youth" is personified as a sickly figure, paradoxically haunted ("spectre") by the inevitable nature of ageing and death.
  • Repeated caesuras create a ponderous atmosphere, one of reflection.
  • "pale" and "thin" connote imagery of illness and death in contrast too the fertile imagery of "grow."
  • The dramatic end to the sentence ("dies") highlights the past passage of time and the harsh reality of the cycle of life.
• "Away! away! for I will fly to thee (...) But on the viewless wings of Poesy..."

  • Epizeuxis of "away" suggests that the speaker travels an intellectual and emotional distance to his own dreamworld, emphasised by exclamations.
  • "Poesy" as an archaic term for poetry creates importance and a sense of drama. The speaker suggests that poetry is something you can get lost in through dreamy imagery of "fly" and "wings."
  • The speaker wants to fly and join the nightingale in its refuge from the world.
  • Instead of wine, he's going to "fly" on the "wings" of his own poetry. Its wing are invisible or "viewless."
  • The speaker is hopeful that poetry will take him to the nightingale's world even though his brain confuses him and slows him down.
• "I have been half in love with easeful Death, // Call'd him soft names..."

  • Imagery of death and decay.
  • "half in love" suggests a sense of conflict in the speaker's mind, he seems confused and undecided, or not committed to the idea of "death" fully.
  • "easeful" and "soft" create images of peace and tranquility through death, linking to Keats' desire for death due to his depression.
  • "Death" is personified and given the male gender with the pronoun "him." Ideas of power and intensity present.
  • Keats died in his 20s.
• "I have ears in vain - // To thy high requiem become a sod."

  • "requiem" is a piece of music written to mark a death. The nightingale sings at night as though it has written this song to mark Keats desire for death.
  • "ears in vain" suggests that the nightingale's beautiful song will be wasted on his ears if he dies.