1. INTRODUCTION
The Genesis of This Ode
In the early months of 1819, Keats was living with his friend Brown at Wentworth Place, Hampstead. In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in its song, and one morning, sitting in a chair on the grass-plot under a plum-tree, he composed a poem containing his poetic feelings about the song of the nightingale. This was his “Ode to a Nightingale” which was first printed in July, 1819. Subsequently it formed part of the volume which appeared in 1820 entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems.
The Same Train of Thought in Four of the Odes
Four of Keats’s odes, “the Ode to a Nightingale” “the Ode on a Grecian Urn” “the Ode on Melancholy” and “To Autumn” should be studied together. They were all written in 1819 and the same train of thought runs through them all. One can even say that these four odes sum up Keats’s philosophy.
The Most Passionately Human and Personal of the Odes
“The first-written of the four, “the Ode to a Nightingale” is the most passionately human and personal of them all”. It was written soon after the death of Keats’s brother Tom, to whom he had been deeply attached and whom he nursed to the end. Keats was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world in which a young man grows pale, becomes a skeleton, and meets his end prematurely (“Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”). The song of the nightingale aroused in him a longing to escape with it from this world of sorrows to the world of ideal beauty. The song of the nightingale somehow symbolised to him a world of ideal beauty. “He did not think of a nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the bird’s song, he longed for death rather than a return of disillusionment.”
A Key Contrast in the Poem
The poem contrasts the immortality of the nightingale (as symbolised by its song) with the mortality of human beings. It also contrasts the happiness and joy of the bird with the sufferings, sorrows and afflictions of the human world where youth, beauty and love are all short-lived.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Stanza 1
The Benumbing Effect of the Nightingale’s Song
The poet’s heart aches and his body is benumbed as he hears the song of a nightingale. He feels like one who has taken a benumbing poison or a dulling drug. This effect is produced on him by the happy song of the nightingale who is singing in a joyous, glorious voice among the green beech-trees; and who is called by the poet a light-winged nymph of the trees.
The Effect of Languor Heightened by the Very Movement of the Verse
It is to be noted that the poet lapses away into a kind of swoon on hearing the ecstatic song of the nightingale and he seeks oblivion. The following words in this stanza produce a cumulative effect of drugged languor: “aches”, “drowsy numbness”, “pains”, “dull opiate”, “Lethe-wards had sunk”. The very movement of the verse here contributes to the total effect of languor that is produced.
The Excess of Happiness
It is an excess of happiness, occasioned by the bird’s song, that produces the mood of languor in the poet. However, the narcotic effect is to some extent relieved by a feeling of renewed life that is produced by a reference to the “light-winged Dryad of trees”, “the melodious plot of beechen green”, and “summer”.
Stanza 2
The Poet’s Desire For Some Marvellous Wine
The poet craves for a drink of some marvellous wine brewed in the warm, gay and mirthful regions of France, or a large cup of red wine fetched from the fountain of the Muses. He wants this wine to enable him to leave this world of reality and to escape into the forest where he can join the nightingale.
An Atmosphere of Warmth in this Stanza
The nightingale and its songs have given way, in this stanza, to other thoughts—thoughts of wine, the colourful lands in which its grapes are grown, and the gaiety which it brings, A general atmosphere of warmth predominates in this stanza. “Sun-burnt mirth” combines the idea of the sun’s warmth with the warmth of joy in the merry-makers. This is a richly sensuous stanza with its references to gaiety and merrymaking, the cool wine, the dancing, the blushful wine with its bubbles winking at the brim. The poet’s desire for wine does not mean a desire for warmth and gaiety; it is a desire for escape from the world of realities.
Stanza 3
The Sorrows in Human Life
The poet wishes to forget himself and escape from this world of perplexity and sorrow into the forest to be in the company of the nightingale. Life, he says, offers a depressing spectacle with its weariness, fever, and fret. This is a world in which people hear, each other’s groans, a world in which palsy may attack the old and consumption may attack the young, in which merely to think is to become sad, and in which both beauty and love are short-lived.
Most Pessimistic Lines
Here we have some of the most pessimistic lines in English poetry. Of course the picture of life depicted here is one-sided, but it is nonetheless realistic and convincing. It cannot be doubted that the amount of suffering in this world is far greater than the amount of happiness. Apart from that, these lines echo the poet’s personal grief caused by the premature death of his brother Tom. Although these lines are prompted chiefly by personal grief, yet their universal character has to be recognised.
The Nightingale’s Happiness
The Nightingale is believed by the poet to be happy because it is not human, because it has never known the weariness, the fever and fret of human existence. “And the poet knows too well that the happiness is mentally following the bird into its world among the leaves cannot last, for he is a human being after all, and what is human must pass away. His depression is thus implicit in the happiness itself.”
Stanza 4
The Poet’s Use of His Imagination to Escape from Life •
Dismissing the idea of wine, the poet decides to fly into the forest on the wings of his poetic imagination. He rejects Bacchus and seeks the help of Poesy. The next moment he feels transported into the forest. The moon is shining, surrounded by the stars, but the forest is dark because very little light can penetrate the thickly-growing leaves of trees.
The Beauty of Nature
After having given expression to thoughts of human sorrow in the third stanza, the poet here makes a vigorous effort to get back into a happy mood. Gloomy thoughts about the human lot are now brushed aside, together with the possibility of wine. Seeking refuge in poetic fancy, he draws pleasure from the glory of Nature. However, the picture of Nature in the second half of the stanza has been criticised as being “affected” because of the reference to the “Queen-Moon”, and the idea of the stars as fairies. “Keats is being self-consciously poetical in the bad sense, as though he had gone back to the ‘pretty’ manner of Endymion. It is not accidental that he has used the rather affected word “Poesy” here. The lines are exceedingly charming, and when we have said that, we have made a point against them. This kind of charm is not what we have come to accept from the mature Keats.”-—(Robin Mayhead)
Stanza 5
The Flowers in the Forest
The poet cannot see what flowers grow at his feet in the forest and what blossoms are on the fruit trees. However, by the scents that fill the dark air, he can guess that the forest is full of white hawthorns, sweet-briers, violets, and buds of musk-roses which will in due course attract multitudes of flies on summer evenings.
A Richly Sensuous Stanza
This is again a richly sensuous stanza. The poet makes a delighted response to the sensuous beauty of the world of Nature.
Stanza 6
The Poet’s Desire for Death
As he hears the nightingale’s song in the darkness, he remembers how on many occasions in his life he has wished for death that would bring a release from the burden of existence. More than ever before, he now feels a desire to die, though he would like to die a painless death: “To cease upon the midnight with no pain.” The nightingale will continue to pour forth its ecstatic melody even when he is dead and become completely deaf to it.
A Morbid Mood
The mood of the poet has again changed. He started the poem in a mood of ecstasy which changed, into a mood of extreme sorrow in the third stanza. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he changed back into a joyous mood. Now he expresses a wish to die. In this stanza he is therefore in a most morbid mood. The desire for death is obviously an unhealthy one and, though the reader may have been sharing the preceding moods of the poet, he may not be able to share this desire for death.
Stanza 7
The Mortality of Human Beings Versus the Nightingale’s Immortality
The poet now contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the nightingale. The nightingale’s song, he argues, has not changed for centuries. The voice of the nightingale which he now hears is perhaps the same as was heard in ancient times by emperor and clown, the same as was heard by the miserable Ruth as she stood in the alien corn. It is the same voice which has often cast a spell upon the enchanted windows of a castle situated on the shore of a dangerous ocean in “fairy lands forlorn”.
Illogical Reasoning in this Stanza
There is something illogical about the poet’s attributing immortality to the nightingale but, of course, he is referring to the continuity of the bird’s song which has remained unchanged through the centuries. He certainly does not mean that the bird is literally immortal. He only takes the nightingale’s song as a symbol of permanence. Generations pass, yet the song of the nightingale continues from age to age. In “the Ode to a Nightingale” Keats accepts impermanence as inevitable, but here he dwells upon the idea of permanence.
The Famous Closing Lines of this Stanza
The last two lines of the stanza have become famous for the sense of wonder and mystery which they arouse. It is said that in these two lines Keats has touched the high watermark of romanticism.
Stanza 8
The Poet’s Disillusionment
The word “forlorn” acts on the poet’s mind like the ringing of an alarm bell and reminds him of his own forlorn condition. As the song of the nightingale becomes more distant, his imagination which had carried him into the forest also decline, and the poetic vision fades. He knows that he is moving back from the region of poetic fancy to the common world of reality. After all, “the fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.”
The Note of Frustration in the Final Stanza
In the concluding stanza, the poet introduces two new ideas. One is that even the song of the nightingale cannot be heard constantly and that it must fade away before long. Secondly, the poetic imagination itself has only brief flights and that, at the end of a poetic flight to beautiful regions, one must return to the painful realities of life-. Thus the ode, which had opened on a note of ecstasy, ends on a note of frustration.
3. CRITICAL APPRECIATION
A Masterpiece
“The Ode to a Nightingale” shows the ripeness and maturity of Keats’s poetic faculty. This poem is truly a masterpiece, showing the splendour of Keats’s imagination on its pure romantic side, and remarkable also for its note of reflection and meditation. The central idea here is the contrast of the joy and beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrows of human life and the transitoriness of beauty and love in this world.
Its Melancholy, and the Note of Pessimism
A passionate melancholy broods over the whole poem. The passage describing the sorrows and misfortunes of life is deeply pessimistic. The world is full of weariness, fever, and fret, and the groans of suffering humanity. Palsy afflicts the old and premature, death overtakes the young. To think here is to be full of sorrow; both beauty and love are short-lived.
The Reason for the Poet’s Despondency
Keats wrote this poem shortly after the death (from consumption) of his brother Tom to whom he was deeply attached. He was also perhaps thinking of the premature death of Elizabeth Taylor. He was therefore weighed down by a profound sense of the tragedy of life; and of that sense of tragedy, this poem is a poignant expression.
The Desire to Die
The note of pessimism is found also in the lines where the poet expresses a desire to die, “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. When we remember that Keats actually died a premature death, we realise the note of unconscious prophecy in these lines, which for this reason become still more pathetic.
Sorrows of Life in General; and the Personal Griefs
The passionately personal and human character of this poem is thus obvious. It reveals Keats’s sense of the tragedy of human life in general and his sense of personal suffering in particular. The poem brings before our eyes a painful picture of the sorrows and griefs of human life, and at the same time it conveys to us the melancholy and sadness which had afflicted Keats for various reasons. The poem is the cry of a wounded soul.
Its Rich Sensuousness and Pictorial Quality
The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats’s pictorial quality and his rich sensuousness. We have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which the poet expresses a passionate desire for some Provincial wine or the red wine from the fountain of the Muses have a rich appeal:
“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 sun-burnt mirth!”
These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, jollity, merry-making, drinking and dancing. Similarly, the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly pleasing.
Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars, looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies:
“And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays”.
The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.
Apart from these sensuous pictures, there is also the vivid and pathetic image of Ruth when, sick for home, she stood tearful amid the alien corn. This is a highly suggestive picture calling up many associations to the mind of one who is acquainted with the Bible.
Its Lyric Intensity
The poem is a beautiful example of lyrical poetry, poetry which is the impassioned expression of passionate feelings. The poem opens with a passionate feeling of joy akin to the benumbing effect of some drug. This is followed by a passionate desire for wine. Then comes a passionate melancholy born of the spectacle of sorrow in this world. Next is the passionate delight in flowers and blossoms, followed by & passionate desire for death. The lyrical intensity of this ode is, indeed, one of the reasons of its greatness as poetry.
Its Style
The poem is written in a superb style. It displays Keats’s power as a master of poetic language at its highest. Keats here shows consummate skill in a choice of words and in making original and highly expressive phrases. Certain phrases, expressions and lines continue to haunt the mind of the reader long after he has read the poem. The phrase “the blushful Hippocrene” which refers to the fountain of the Muses and its red wine looking like the blushing cheeks of a pretty girl is indeed beautiful. Again, this wine has beaded bubbles “winking at the brim”. The word “winking” here means sparkling but how much more is suggested by this word! The bubbles seem to be inviting a man to the wine as a girl’s wink would invite him to her company. Another expressive phrase is “purple-stained mouth”, that is, a mouth which has been stained red by wine. Memorable also are the following phrases and expressions—”verdurous blooms” (line 40); “embalmed darkness” (line, 43); “Mid-May’s eldest child—the coming musk-rose” (lines 48-49); “The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves” (line 50). The line “the weariness, the fever and the fret” admirably describes the sorrows and perplexities of life. “Leaden-eyed despair” effectively conveys the dullness in the eyes of a man who is in a state of despair. Still another memorable line is: “To thy high requiem become a sod.”
The Romantic Character of the Poem
“The Ode to a Nightingale” is a highly romantic poem. Its romanticism is due to (a) its rich sensuousness, (b) its note of intense desire and its deep melancholy, (c) its suggestiveness, (d) its sweet music, and its fresh and original phrases. Two lines in the poem represent the high water-mark of pure romanticism:
“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”.
The touch of the supernatural, the mystery, and above all the suggestiveness of these lines have made them a test by which purely romantic poetry can be judged and measured.
In form this poem is a “regular ode”. There is a uniformity of the number of lines and of the rhyme-scheme in all the stanzas.
The Genesis of This Ode
In the early months of 1819, Keats was living with his friend Brown at Wentworth Place, Hampstead. In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in its song, and one morning, sitting in a chair on the grass-plot under a plum-tree, he composed a poem containing his poetic feelings about the song of the nightingale. This was his “Ode to a Nightingale” which was first printed in July, 1819. Subsequently it formed part of the volume which appeared in 1820 entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems.
The Same Train of Thought in Four of the Odes
Four of Keats’s odes, “the Ode to a Nightingale” “the Ode on a Grecian Urn” “the Ode on Melancholy” and “To Autumn” should be studied together. They were all written in 1819 and the same train of thought runs through them all. One can even say that these four odes sum up Keats’s philosophy.
The Most Passionately Human and Personal of the Odes
“The first-written of the four, “the Ode to a Nightingale” is the most passionately human and personal of them all”. It was written soon after the death of Keats’s brother Tom, to whom he had been deeply attached and whom he nursed to the end. Keats was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world in which a young man grows pale, becomes a skeleton, and meets his end prematurely (“Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”). The song of the nightingale aroused in him a longing to escape with it from this world of sorrows to the world of ideal beauty. The song of the nightingale somehow symbolised to him a world of ideal beauty. “He did not think of a nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the bird’s song, he longed for death rather than a return of disillusionment.”
A Key Contrast in the Poem
The poem contrasts the immortality of the nightingale (as symbolised by its song) with the mortality of human beings. It also contrasts the happiness and joy of the bird with the sufferings, sorrows and afflictions of the human world where youth, beauty and love are all short-lived.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Stanza 1
The Benumbing Effect of the Nightingale’s Song
The poet’s heart aches and his body is benumbed as he hears the song of a nightingale. He feels like one who has taken a benumbing poison or a dulling drug. This effect is produced on him by the happy song of the nightingale who is singing in a joyous, glorious voice among the green beech-trees; and who is called by the poet a light-winged nymph of the trees.
The Effect of Languor Heightened by the Very Movement of the Verse
It is to be noted that the poet lapses away into a kind of swoon on hearing the ecstatic song of the nightingale and he seeks oblivion. The following words in this stanza produce a cumulative effect of drugged languor: “aches”, “drowsy numbness”, “pains”, “dull opiate”, “Lethe-wards had sunk”. The very movement of the verse here contributes to the total effect of languor that is produced.
The Excess of Happiness
It is an excess of happiness, occasioned by the bird’s song, that produces the mood of languor in the poet. However, the narcotic effect is to some extent relieved by a feeling of renewed life that is produced by a reference to the “light-winged Dryad of trees”, “the melodious plot of beechen green”, and “summer”.
Stanza 2
The Poet’s Desire For Some Marvellous Wine
The poet craves for a drink of some marvellous wine brewed in the warm, gay and mirthful regions of France, or a large cup of red wine fetched from the fountain of the Muses. He wants this wine to enable him to leave this world of reality and to escape into the forest where he can join the nightingale.
An Atmosphere of Warmth in this Stanza
The nightingale and its songs have given way, in this stanza, to other thoughts—thoughts of wine, the colourful lands in which its grapes are grown, and the gaiety which it brings, A general atmosphere of warmth predominates in this stanza. “Sun-burnt mirth” combines the idea of the sun’s warmth with the warmth of joy in the merry-makers. This is a richly sensuous stanza with its references to gaiety and merrymaking, the cool wine, the dancing, the blushful wine with its bubbles winking at the brim. The poet’s desire for wine does not mean a desire for warmth and gaiety; it is a desire for escape from the world of realities.
Stanza 3
The Sorrows in Human Life
The poet wishes to forget himself and escape from this world of perplexity and sorrow into the forest to be in the company of the nightingale. Life, he says, offers a depressing spectacle with its weariness, fever, and fret. This is a world in which people hear, each other’s groans, a world in which palsy may attack the old and consumption may attack the young, in which merely to think is to become sad, and in which both beauty and love are short-lived.
Most Pessimistic Lines
Here we have some of the most pessimistic lines in English poetry. Of course the picture of life depicted here is one-sided, but it is nonetheless realistic and convincing. It cannot be doubted that the amount of suffering in this world is far greater than the amount of happiness. Apart from that, these lines echo the poet’s personal grief caused by the premature death of his brother Tom. Although these lines are prompted chiefly by personal grief, yet their universal character has to be recognised.
The Nightingale’s Happiness
The Nightingale is believed by the poet to be happy because it is not human, because it has never known the weariness, the fever and fret of human existence. “And the poet knows too well that the happiness is mentally following the bird into its world among the leaves cannot last, for he is a human being after all, and what is human must pass away. His depression is thus implicit in the happiness itself.”
Stanza 4
The Poet’s Use of His Imagination to Escape from Life •
Dismissing the idea of wine, the poet decides to fly into the forest on the wings of his poetic imagination. He rejects Bacchus and seeks the help of Poesy. The next moment he feels transported into the forest. The moon is shining, surrounded by the stars, but the forest is dark because very little light can penetrate the thickly-growing leaves of trees.
The Beauty of Nature
After having given expression to thoughts of human sorrow in the third stanza, the poet here makes a vigorous effort to get back into a happy mood. Gloomy thoughts about the human lot are now brushed aside, together with the possibility of wine. Seeking refuge in poetic fancy, he draws pleasure from the glory of Nature. However, the picture of Nature in the second half of the stanza has been criticised as being “affected” because of the reference to the “Queen-Moon”, and the idea of the stars as fairies. “Keats is being self-consciously poetical in the bad sense, as though he had gone back to the ‘pretty’ manner of Endymion. It is not accidental that he has used the rather affected word “Poesy” here. The lines are exceedingly charming, and when we have said that, we have made a point against them. This kind of charm is not what we have come to accept from the mature Keats.”-—(Robin Mayhead)
Stanza 5
The Flowers in the Forest
The poet cannot see what flowers grow at his feet in the forest and what blossoms are on the fruit trees. However, by the scents that fill the dark air, he can guess that the forest is full of white hawthorns, sweet-briers, violets, and buds of musk-roses which will in due course attract multitudes of flies on summer evenings.
A Richly Sensuous Stanza
This is again a richly sensuous stanza. The poet makes a delighted response to the sensuous beauty of the world of Nature.
Stanza 6
The Poet’s Desire for Death
As he hears the nightingale’s song in the darkness, he remembers how on many occasions in his life he has wished for death that would bring a release from the burden of existence. More than ever before, he now feels a desire to die, though he would like to die a painless death: “To cease upon the midnight with no pain.” The nightingale will continue to pour forth its ecstatic melody even when he is dead and become completely deaf to it.
A Morbid Mood
The mood of the poet has again changed. He started the poem in a mood of ecstasy which changed, into a mood of extreme sorrow in the third stanza. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he changed back into a joyous mood. Now he expresses a wish to die. In this stanza he is therefore in a most morbid mood. The desire for death is obviously an unhealthy one and, though the reader may have been sharing the preceding moods of the poet, he may not be able to share this desire for death.
Stanza 7
The Mortality of Human Beings Versus the Nightingale’s Immortality
The poet now contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the nightingale. The nightingale’s song, he argues, has not changed for centuries. The voice of the nightingale which he now hears is perhaps the same as was heard in ancient times by emperor and clown, the same as was heard by the miserable Ruth as she stood in the alien corn. It is the same voice which has often cast a spell upon the enchanted windows of a castle situated on the shore of a dangerous ocean in “fairy lands forlorn”.
Illogical Reasoning in this Stanza
There is something illogical about the poet’s attributing immortality to the nightingale but, of course, he is referring to the continuity of the bird’s song which has remained unchanged through the centuries. He certainly does not mean that the bird is literally immortal. He only takes the nightingale’s song as a symbol of permanence. Generations pass, yet the song of the nightingale continues from age to age. In “the Ode to a Nightingale” Keats accepts impermanence as inevitable, but here he dwells upon the idea of permanence.
The Famous Closing Lines of this Stanza
The last two lines of the stanza have become famous for the sense of wonder and mystery which they arouse. It is said that in these two lines Keats has touched the high watermark of romanticism.
Stanza 8
The Poet’s Disillusionment
The word “forlorn” acts on the poet’s mind like the ringing of an alarm bell and reminds him of his own forlorn condition. As the song of the nightingale becomes more distant, his imagination which had carried him into the forest also decline, and the poetic vision fades. He knows that he is moving back from the region of poetic fancy to the common world of reality. After all, “the fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.”
The Note of Frustration in the Final Stanza
In the concluding stanza, the poet introduces two new ideas. One is that even the song of the nightingale cannot be heard constantly and that it must fade away before long. Secondly, the poetic imagination itself has only brief flights and that, at the end of a poetic flight to beautiful regions, one must return to the painful realities of life-. Thus the ode, which had opened on a note of ecstasy, ends on a note of frustration.
3. CRITICAL APPRECIATION
A Masterpiece
“The Ode to a Nightingale” shows the ripeness and maturity of Keats’s poetic faculty. This poem is truly a masterpiece, showing the splendour of Keats’s imagination on its pure romantic side, and remarkable also for its note of reflection and meditation. The central idea here is the contrast of the joy and beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrows of human life and the transitoriness of beauty and love in this world.
Its Melancholy, and the Note of Pessimism
A passionate melancholy broods over the whole poem. The passage describing the sorrows and misfortunes of life is deeply pessimistic. The world is full of weariness, fever, and fret, and the groans of suffering humanity. Palsy afflicts the old and premature, death overtakes the young. To think here is to be full of sorrow; both beauty and love are short-lived.
The Reason for the Poet’s Despondency
Keats wrote this poem shortly after the death (from consumption) of his brother Tom to whom he was deeply attached. He was also perhaps thinking of the premature death of Elizabeth Taylor. He was therefore weighed down by a profound sense of the tragedy of life; and of that sense of tragedy, this poem is a poignant expression.
The Desire to Die
The note of pessimism is found also in the lines where the poet expresses a desire to die, “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. When we remember that Keats actually died a premature death, we realise the note of unconscious prophecy in these lines, which for this reason become still more pathetic.
Sorrows of Life in General; and the Personal Griefs
The passionately personal and human character of this poem is thus obvious. It reveals Keats’s sense of the tragedy of human life in general and his sense of personal suffering in particular. The poem brings before our eyes a painful picture of the sorrows and griefs of human life, and at the same time it conveys to us the melancholy and sadness which had afflicted Keats for various reasons. The poem is the cry of a wounded soul.
Its Rich Sensuousness and Pictorial Quality
The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats’s pictorial quality and his rich sensuousness. We have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which the poet expresses a passionate desire for some Provincial wine or the red wine from the fountain of the Muses have a rich appeal:
“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 sun-burnt mirth!”
These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, jollity, merry-making, drinking and dancing. Similarly, the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly pleasing.
Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars, looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies:
“And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays”.
The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.
Apart from these sensuous pictures, there is also the vivid and pathetic image of Ruth when, sick for home, she stood tearful amid the alien corn. This is a highly suggestive picture calling up many associations to the mind of one who is acquainted with the Bible.
Its Lyric Intensity
The poem is a beautiful example of lyrical poetry, poetry which is the impassioned expression of passionate feelings. The poem opens with a passionate feeling of joy akin to the benumbing effect of some drug. This is followed by a passionate desire for wine. Then comes a passionate melancholy born of the spectacle of sorrow in this world. Next is the passionate delight in flowers and blossoms, followed by & passionate desire for death. The lyrical intensity of this ode is, indeed, one of the reasons of its greatness as poetry.
Its Style
The poem is written in a superb style. It displays Keats’s power as a master of poetic language at its highest. Keats here shows consummate skill in a choice of words and in making original and highly expressive phrases. Certain phrases, expressions and lines continue to haunt the mind of the reader long after he has read the poem. The phrase “the blushful Hippocrene” which refers to the fountain of the Muses and its red wine looking like the blushing cheeks of a pretty girl is indeed beautiful. Again, this wine has beaded bubbles “winking at the brim”. The word “winking” here means sparkling but how much more is suggested by this word! The bubbles seem to be inviting a man to the wine as a girl’s wink would invite him to her company. Another expressive phrase is “purple-stained mouth”, that is, a mouth which has been stained red by wine. Memorable also are the following phrases and expressions—”verdurous blooms” (line 40); “embalmed darkness” (line, 43); “Mid-May’s eldest child—the coming musk-rose” (lines 48-49); “The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves” (line 50). The line “the weariness, the fever and the fret” admirably describes the sorrows and perplexities of life. “Leaden-eyed despair” effectively conveys the dullness in the eyes of a man who is in a state of despair. Still another memorable line is: “To thy high requiem become a sod.”
The Romantic Character of the Poem
“The Ode to a Nightingale” is a highly romantic poem. Its romanticism is due to (a) its rich sensuousness, (b) its note of intense desire and its deep melancholy, (c) its suggestiveness, (d) its sweet music, and its fresh and original phrases. Two lines in the poem represent the high water-mark of pure romanticism:
“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”.
The touch of the supernatural, the mystery, and above all the suggestiveness of these lines have made them a test by which purely romantic poetry can be judged and measured.
In form this poem is a “regular ode”. There is a uniformity of the number of lines and of the rhyme-scheme in all the stanzas.
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