Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats
 A bit about Keats
 Like many Romantic Era  Keats was too ill and too
poets (such as Shelley, who poor to marry the love of his
drowned, and Byron, TB), life, Fanny Brawne.
Keats lived a tragic life and  Died at age 24 from TB
died young
 Tragic life: Father died when
Keats was 8 (fell off horse),
mother died when Keats was
14 (TB), left impoverished,
several siblings died of TB
 Themes
 Keats’ poems wrestle  In his poems he asks:
with the problem of How do we live our
evil and suffering lives once we realize
that “the world is full
of misery and
heartbreak, pain,
sickness, and
oppression”?
 Form and Structure
 Keats and his Romantic peers almost single-handedly revived the ode form
for modern readers with poems like
 The ode is an Ancient Greek song performed at formal occasions, usually
in praise of its subject.
 "Ode to a Nightingale" is a particular kind of ode – a Horatian ode, after the
Roman poet Horace. In general, a Horatian ode has a consistent stanza
length and metre.
 "Ode to a Nightingale" is notable for being the longest of Keats's six "Great
Odes." It is also often considered the most personal, with its reflections on
death and the stresses of life.
 The poem has eight separate stanzas of ten lines each, and the metre of
each line in the stanza, except for the eighth, is iambic pentametre. The
eighth line is written in iambic trimetre which means it has only three
stresses in the line, not five.

http://www.shmoop.com/ode-nightingale/rhyme-form-meter.html
 Romantic Odes
 There are usually three elements in a Romantic Ode:
 the description of a particularised outer natural scene;
 an extended meditation, which the scene stimulates, and
which may be focused on a private problem or a universal
situation or both;
 the occurrence of an insight or vision, a resolution or
decision, which signals a return to the scene originally
described, but with a new perspective created by the
intervening meditation.
 Stanza I
 As you read, pick out which words express his
pleasure and which ones express his pain and
which words express his intense feeling and
which his numbed feeling.
 Consider whether pleasure can be so intense
that, paradoxically, it either numbs us or
causes pain.
 What qualities does the poet ascribe to the
nightingale?
 Analysis – Stanza I
 Sense of anguish and lethargy
 Feeling of numbness is linked to taking ‘hemlock’ or an
‘opiate’
 Romantic notion – loss of sensation = death.
 The pain the persona feels is sluggish
 Paradoxically – his distress is a result of being too happy.
 The nightingale has freedom and a sense of the supernatural
 There is an idyllic surrounding and everything seems easy for
the bird – the persona wishes that creativity came so easily.
 Stanza II
 Think about the effects alcohol has; which one
or ones is the poet seeking?
 Since his goal is to join the bird, what quality
or qualities of the bird does he want to
experience? How might alcohol enable him to
achieve that desire?
 Does the wine resemble the nightingale in
being associated with summer, song, and
happiness?
 Analysis – Stanza II
 The persona wishes for intoxication, but not through ordinary means.
 The wine must be special and mysterious from the “deep-delved earth”
 It must have power and full of the richness of summer “a beaker full of the
warm South”.
 The reference to the font of poetic inspiration – Hippocrene indicates the
powerful role of the imagination.
 The persona is seeking an overwhelming experience “beaded bubbles,
winking at the brim”
 Rich, energetic language contrasts the langour of the first stanza
 He longs for an escape from the real world “leave the world unseen”
(perhaps Keats’ partiality for death?)
 Stanza III
 Does thinking of the human condition
intensify, diminish, or have no effect on the
poet's desire to escape the world?
 What is the relationship of the bird to the
world the poet describes?
 By implication, what kind of world does the
nightingale live in? (Is it the same as or
different from the poet's?)
 Analysis – Stanza III
 States all of the things the persona finds unsatisfactory in his
human existence.
 Repetition of “the” in “the weariness, the fever, and the fret”
conveys sense of tiredness.
 Focus on the movement of death “where youth grows pale”
 Disdains the restrictions of mortality “where but to think is to
be full of sorrow”
 Longing for permanence but shows the difficulties in
achieving inspiration.
 Think about the contrasts in the imagery in this stanza,
compared to the previous stanza.
 Stanza IV
 In choosing Poesy, is he calling on analytical
or scientific reasoning, on poetry and
imagination, on passion, on sensuality, or on
some something else?
 The imagined world described in the rest of the
stanza is dark; what qualities are associated
with this darkness, e.g., is it frightening, safe,
attractive, empty, fulfilling, sensuous, alive?
 Analysis – Stanza IV
 “Away! away!” sense of agitation at the start of the stanza.
 He decides that his imagination will take him away to
accompany the nightingale.
 Even though this is flawed “viewless”, he states that the
limitations come from human limitations “the dull brain
perplexes and retards”
 He imagines that he is with the bird “Already with thee” and
this brings about sensitivity “tender is the night”
 Inspiration has come from imagination - but even this is
flawed “but here there is no light” – he hoped to find
inspiration in the heavens, but it is a fantasy.
 Stanza V
 The imagined world described in the rest of the stanza
is dark; what qualities are associated with this
darkness, e.g., is it frightening, safe, attractive, empty,
fulfilling, sensuous, alive?
 Even in this refuge, death is present; what words hint
of death?
 In the progression of the seasons, what changes occur
between spring and summer? how do they differ (as,
for instance, autumn brings fulfillment, harvest, and
the beginning of decay which becomes death in
winter)? Why might Keats leap to thoughts of the
summer to come?
 Analysis – Stanza V
 The lack of vision, highlights his disillusionment –
there is a clear sense of the natural world’s beauty but
the persona is “embalmed in darkness”
 Sensual portrayal of seasonal beauty –
personification, detail in description and
onomatopoeia
 Ironically while there are flaws in the imagination, it
is the imagination that allows for the persona to “see”
and “smell” the beauty in the darkness.
 Stanza VI
 Is there any suggestion of the bird's dying or
experiencing anything but bliss? Note the contrast
between the bird's singing and the poet's hearing that
song.
 What are the emotional effects of or associations with
"high requiem" and "sod"? Why does Keats now hear
the bird's song as a requiem?
 Is there any irony in Keats's using the same word to
describe both the nightingale and death--the bird
sings with "full-throated ease" at the end of stanza I
and death is "easeful" (line 2 of this stanza)?
 Analysis – Stanza VI
 Image of darkness continues “darkling”
 Confesses thoughts that death could be an escape “I have been
half-in love with easeful Death”.
 Poetic euphemism for death “take into the air my quiet breath”
 The persona recognises that the bird will be able to continue
even though he would not hear it
 His death then, leads to a separation from the bird’s song.
 Juxtaposition of images: “high requiem” and “sod”
 Stanza VII
 Explain the meaning of the word “immortal”.
 What ideas or aspects of human life do the
references to ancient days and the biblical
allusions represent?
 Does bringing up the idea of pain prepare us or
help to prepare us for the final stanza?
 Analysis – Stanza VII
 The significance of the birds and its song is emphasised “thou
was not born for death, immortal Bird!”
 The song of the bird represents perfection and beauty.
 The bird’s song has comforted through time “in ancient days”
 This highlights how people have been charmed by the
imagination
 The supernatural element in the last two lines of the stanza
show that the imagination transcends mortality and time.
 Stanza VIII
 The persona repeats the word "forlorn" from the end
of stanza VII; who or what is now forlorn? Is the poet
identified with or separate from the nightingale?
 What delusion is the poet awakening from?
 Is there change in the bird, in the poet, or in both?
 What is the persona questioning at the end of the
poem?
 In what ways has the persona changed?
 Think about the tone at the end of the poem.
 Analysis - Stanza VIII
 “Forlorn” indicates that the imaginative reverie is over – the persona
awakes to reality as he was always destined to.
 Repetition of “adieu” shows his reluctance to leave the bird.
 The bird continues to the “next valley glades” but its song continues.
 Confusion has returned – his insight (in the preceding stanzas) has gone
and he is left in uncertainty “Do I wake or sleep?”
 Feels bereft without the music of the bird.
 He has been privileged with extraordinary revelations, however, this has
come at a cost. He realises he cannot escape the ordinary world and
therefore, he cannot achieve the state of perfect imaginative creativity.