Complete Guide To Keats’s Ode to the 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 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:

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 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?

An Introduction to John Keats

John Keats was born in October 31, 1795, and died in Rome in 23rd February, 1821. He chose his own epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water".

General Characteristics of Keats' Poetry:

(i) Conflict: In Keats' poetry, we find the conflict between Permanence and between Beauty and Mutability, between Time and art and so on.

(ii)  Treatment of Sensuousness: The term 'sensuousness' is the percephon of things indertanding through our senses vision (Eye), taste (Tongue), smell (Nose), sound (Ear), touch (Skin) etc. For example, in Ode to a Nightingale, the whole fifth stanza is a riot of sensuous enjoyments. The bower of the nightingale is dark, but filled with perfume. Though the poet cannot see the flowers at his feet, he can recognize accurately different flowers by their smell. He says:

"I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

 With his subtle sense, the poet can recognize 'grass', 'thicket, the fruit tree wild', 'hawthorn', 'eglantine', 'violets', and 'musk rose' with their distinct fragrance in 'embalmed darkness'. With his auditory organs, he can hear the murmurous hunt of the - flies' are in search of 'dewy wine' from 'musk rose'...

(iii) Negative Capability: In a letter, December 1817, Keats describes Negative capability as essential to the creative mind t is a term coined by Keats to describe the capacity to be "in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

      Writers possessing this ability have the capability to keep aside their own personalities in order to perceive reality in its manifold complexities. Keats believes that few writers possess this ability and that most people in their quest to categorize and rationalize every uncertain thing, distort and reduce reality. Keats cited Coleridge as a poet lacking this quality and praises Shakespeare as one possessing this quality in great measure. It is the ability to contemplate the world without trying to reconcile its contradictory aspects, or fitting in into closed and rational system.

(iv) Synaesthesia: Synaesthesia is the description of one sense impression by another sense. For example, in the second stanza of Ode to a Nightingale, the description of the rose-red wine is no doubt arouses our gustatory sensation; but Keats has described the "purple stained mouth" of the wine-beaker with visual power.

(v)  Love for Medievalism. 

(vi) Love for Nature. 

(vii) Worshipper of Beauty: For Keats, "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty."(Taken from Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn) 

(viii) Worshipper of Hellenism: (associated, to Greek and Roman culture). 

(ix) Escapist tendency.

 

INTRODUCTION AND ANNOTATIONS

INTRODUCTION

The poem was written in the spring of 1819. It was inspired by the song of a nightingale that had built its nest close to the house of Keats' friend in Hampstead. The bird's song, we are told often, threw Keats into a sort of tranquil pleasure The proper subject of the poem is not so much the bird itself as the poet's aspiration towards a life of beauty away from the oppressing world. That beauty is revealed to him for a moment by listening to the bird's song

ANNOTATIONS Stanza -I

"My heart aches" - The poet feels a sort of pain in his heart. The intensity of the poet's joy in the nightingale's song is transformed into a sort of pain. Here, we may refer to the "aching joys" in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.

'Drowsy numbness" - dullness as of sleep.

Pains-deadens or afflicts. "Drowsy numbness pains / My sense" - a sleepy feeling of numbness deadens poet's sense. 

Hemlock - The juice of Hemlock, a poisonous plant. Socrates was compelled to drink it, and he died. Taken in small doses, it dulls one's senses.

Emptied - drunk.

Dull - producing dullness (sleep)

Opiate - opium.

"To the drains"  - to the last drop.

"One minute past" - one minute ago.

"Lethe-wards" - Into oblivion. Lethe was a river of Hades. From it, the souls of the dead drank water to obtain forgetfulness. The song has made Keats forgetful of everything.

" "Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,/ But being too happy in thy happiness" - The poet is not envious of the bird's happiness, but the excessive joy derived from the bird's song - afflicts him.

"Light-winged"-swiftly flying.

'Dryad' - tree nymph.

"Light-winged Dryad of the trees" - the Nightingale is said to be the swift-flying tree nymph.