Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale

Ø  John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821

Ø  The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery

Ø  First poem: O Solitude” in his magazine, The Examiner

Ø  Keats: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty”

Ø  Keats: “My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk”

Ø  Richard Monckton Milnes published the first full biography

Ø  Dramatic Works: Otho The Great: A Dramatic Fragment (1819) & King Stephen: A Dramatic Fragment (1819)

Ø  Shelley wrote Adonais in commemoration of Keats

Ø  Swinburne: “the Ode to a Nightingale, [is] one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages”

·       There is also an allusion to the Biblical tale of Ruth.

·       The eighth stanza contains a simile: “Forlorn! the very word is like a bell / To toll me back from thee to my sole self!”

· The poet uses imagery throughout the poem, such as in the second stanza when he stimulates the sense of taste in “Tasting of Flora and the country green,” the sense of hearing as in “Provençal song,” and the sense of sight as in “purple-stained mouth.”

·       Assonance is used in the first stanza: “Of beechen green.”

· The poem also contains enjambment in different lines, such as “My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.” The syntax here does not make complete sense in a single line; rather, it carries the meaning to the following line.

·       “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, / But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet.” This state of negative capability is something Keats explained in letters he wrote to Leigh Hunt and his brother.

·       Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

·       In the above, the author refers to bubbles winking, when winking is a human characteristic. In the third stanza, personification is used several times again.

·       Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

·       In this, beauty does not have eyes, and love cannot “pine” (which means to “yearn” or “ache”) for something. The fourth stanza uses repetition, in “Away! Away!” In the fifth stanza, there is again personification, but also wonderful imagery, especially with “…The murmurous haunt of flies…”:

And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

·       Stanza six provides personification again, directed to the nightingale itself:

·       While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy…

·       Stanza seven uses alliteration, which is when a group of words all begin with the same sound, such as “self-same song.”

·       This stanza also alludes to the Biblical story of Ruth, living among people not her own, homesick, in the cornfields, while the eighth and last stanza uses a simile to compare the word “forlorn” and a “bell”:

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

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, 5

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

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 grey hairs, 25

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. 30

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, 35

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. 40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45

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. 50

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 musèd rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55

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. 60

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 65

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

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 famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75

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? 80

·       Dryad: a wood nymph.

·       beechen: of the beech tree.

·       draught: what can be swallowed in a single drink.

·       Flora: the goddess of flowers, here used for flowers themselves.

·       Provençal song. In the early Middle Ages, the poets of southern France, the troubadours of Provence, were particularly famous for their love lyrics.

· Warm South: a southern wine.

·       Hippocrene: a fountain on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses.

·       Bacchus and his pards: the Roman god of wine, who traditionally is shown in a conveyance drawn by leopards.

·       viewless: invisible. This phrase appears in half a dozen poems from 1765 to Mary Robinson’s “The Progress of Liberty” in 1806 (II, 426).

·       Fays: fairies.

·       embalmed: full of balms, or perfumes.

· Pastoral eglantine. Eglantine is properly the sweet-briar, though popularly applied to various varieties of the wild rose. “Pastoral” presumably because it is often referred to in pastoral poetry.

·       Darkling: in the dark

· High requiem: a liturgical song for the repose of the dead.

·       alien corn: alien because Ruth was not an Israelite but a Moabitess, gleaning in the barley fields of Judah (Ruth 2:1-2).

Expl: As Keats listens to the song of the nightingale alone in the poem “Ode to a Nightingale,” he experiences an extreme euphoric joy that ultimately leads to a feeling of pain at his heart. He compares his state of numbness to that created by the administration of the legendary poison given to Socrates, Hemlock, which would set in rigor mortis in the human body.

·       “Or emptied some dull …had sunk.” What is Lethe? Why does Keats invoke this image?

Expl: Lethe was the river of the lower world in Greek mythology, which the dead had to cross in order to reach Hades or hell. Crossing this river would result in a complete loss of memory of what had happened in the world. Keats invokes the image in order to convey the sense that the nightingale’s song made him oblivious of the real world.

·       “Tis not through envy…happiness…”

Expl: In the poem Ode to a Nightingale, Keats says that he feels the pain of joy and a sense of numbness not because of the jealousy of the bird’s better fate, but because of being too happy in its singing.

·       “That thou light-winged Dryad…in full-throated ease.”

Expl: According to Greek mythology, a Dryad was a wood nymph that inhabited a tree and kept watch over it. Just like a Dryad, the Nightingale is not visible, and it is thought to be somewhere in some green grassy spot full of beach trees, the branches and leaves of which have created countless shadows. In this kind of natural setting, the bird is singing the songs of summer spontaneously, oblivious of the cares of the human world.

·       “O for a draught…sunburnt mirth!”

Expl: In order to join the nightingale’s world of pure joy, Keats, here in the poem Ode to a Nightingale, fancies the help of the wine produced in Provence. The wine, stored in a cool place under the earth, would, the poet hopes, remind him of the flowers used in making it, and of the green countryside, the place of its production. He also fancies that he would be able to visualise the dance and the song of merry-making country people of Provence, whose skins become tanned working in the sun.

·       “O for a beaker of wine…the world unseen.”

Expl: In order to join the nightingale’s world of pure joy, Keats here in the poem Ode a Nightingale fancies the help a large cup of wine produced in the warm southern region. He compares the red wine full of bubbles to the fountain of the Muses, created by the hoof of the winged horse, Pegasus on Mount Helicon, the dwelling-place of the Muses, and the round-shaped bubbles to the beads of a rosary. This also reminds him of the red mouth of the drinker, coloured by red wine.

·       “purple-stained mouth.”

Expl: In order to join the nightingale’s world of pure joy, Keats, here in the poem Ode to a Nightingale, fancies the help of a large cup of wine produced in the warm southern region. This reminds him of the mouth of the drinker, which becomes purple, that is, the colour of blue and red mixed together, by red wine.

·       “Fade far away, dissolve…among the leaves hast never known.”

Expl: Keats expresses his wish to be transported to the ideal of Nature, where the nightingale lives, with the help of wine, because he thinks that the human world is full of exhaustion, anxieties, ennui, diseases, sorrows, sufferings, impermanence, and imperfections.

·       “The weariness, the fever…groan.”

Expl: Keats expresses his wish to be transported to the ideal of Nature, where the nightingale lives, with the help of wine, because he thinks that in the human world, everything is impermanent. Man soon, in the course of time, grows old and becomes afflicted with paralysis and with a few grey hairs on their head, creeps towards death. Again, sometimes young men, suffering from diseases like consumption, lose their health, become bloodless and thin as ghosts and die. (Keats might have written the line from his personal experience of the way his brother, Tom died of consumption.)

·       “Where but to think is…leaden-eyed despairs…”

Expl: Keats expresses his wish to be transported to the ideal of Nature, where the nightingale lives, with the help of wine, because he thinks that in the human world, everything is impermanent and subject to decay and death. For instance, physical beauty does not last long and soon fades in its brilliance. In the same way love is also short-lived. As soon as the thirst for somebody is over, the person seeks somebody else for new love. (The words are written in capital letters at the beginning of the words because the poet personified those.)

·       “Away! Away! … viewless wings of Poesy.”

Expl: Keats suddenly rejects the idea of joining the nightingale’s world of pure joy with the help of wine or by riding the chariot of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, which, according to Greek mythology, was driven by leopards. He intends to join the bird with the help of his poetic imagination, which is ‘wingless’ in the sense that it is invisible. (And he finds that he is already in the world of the nightingale.)

·       “…tender is the night…winding mossy ways.”

As the poet John Keats listens to the song of the bird, he becomes aware of his immediate environment. He finds the night calm, and he presupposes that the moon might be over his head and shining brightly, surrounded by the fairy-like stars. As it is shaded by the branches and leaves of the trees, the moonlight cannot enter the place where he is seated, except occasionally when the breeze moves the leaves and they fall onto the paths overgrown with moss.

·       “embalmed darkness”.

Expl: The place, where the poet is listening to the song of the nightingale is dark, because it is shaded by the thick braches and leaves of the trees. That is why he cannot see the flowers or blossoms, but he can feel their presence from the sweet smells emitting from around him. In this way, the darkness of the place has become “embalmed” or sweet-smelling.

·       “The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine…on summer eves.”

Expl. While listening to the song of the nightingale, Keats becomes intoxicated with pure joy, and his life’s agony is transformed into ecstasy. At this moment, he recalls that many a time he has longed for death and given to it many names in his poems. If he were to die at all, he thinks that it is the most appropriate moment for that. But even after his death, when his body is one with the earth, the bird will continue its song, which will be a funeral song for his death.

·       “Thou wast not born for death…emperor and clown.”

Expl: While listening to the song of the nightingale, Keats becomes conscious not only of the sorrows and sufferings of the human world, but also of his own death. This leads him to contrast this world with that of the bird, whose song has remained the same from ancient times down to modern times and appealed in the same way to all, irrespective of classes, from the beggar to the emperor.

·       “Perhas the self same song…sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home.”

Expl: In the Old Testament, Ruth is described as a Moabite woman married to a Jew, whose death compelled her to migrate to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law. She had to work there as a gleaner in the fields of a wealthy man, Boaz, whom she later married. Keats imagines that the bird might have sung to Ruth and soothed her soul when she was suffering from homesickness, as it is singing now to him.

·       “Charm’d magic casements…in fairy lands forlorn.”

Expl: As an immortal bird, Keats thinks the nightingale must have sung and soothed the souls of the beautiful maidens, who have been made captive by some wizard or monster in the castle just on the cliff overlooking a dangerous sea in a far-off fairy land.The word ‘Charm’d’ is a verb here and its object is ‘magic casements’, which stands for the beautiful maidens standing in front of the ‘casements’ or windows and listening to the song of the nightingale.

·       “Forlorn! The word is like a bell…sole self.”

Expl: Keats suddenly comes to realize that the bird’s song aroused his imagination and transported him to its world of pure joy, and made him forget about the harsh realities of the world. Now he wakes up from his daydreaming and sadly finds himself alone in the world full of “weariness, fever and fret.”

·       “Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat…deceiving elf.”

Expl: Keats suddenly comes to realize that it was his imagination that transported him to the nightingale’s world of pure joy. But soon its power wanes, and the poet is forced to return to the world of harsh realities. This is why he compares imagination to a fairy, who transforms the world only for a short while.

·       “Was it a vision…sleep?”

Expl: Towards the end of the poem, Keats suddenly comes to realize that the bird’s song aroused his imagination and transported him to its world of pure joy, and made him forget about the harsh realities of the world. Now he wakes up from his daydreaming and sadly finds himself alone in the world full of “weariness, fever and fret.” That is why he wonders whether all this is happening in his sleep or in the conscious state.

A.     Keats was a patient with tuberculosis and so felt pain.

B.     His heart was full sorrows and pains

C.      On hearing the nightingale’s song, he experiences euphoric ascent of joy to such an extreme degree that it ultimately leads to the feeling of pain at his heart

D.    NOTA

A.     in twelve-line stanzas

B.      in ten-line stanzas

C.     in fifteen-line stanzas

D.    in ten-line stanzas

A.      ABABCDECDE scheme

B.     ABCBCDCCDE scheme

C.     ABBCCDDEE scheme

D.    NOTA

A.     Rome

B.     France

C.     England

D.    Derbyshire

A.    a poisonous plant which produces death by paralysis

B.     a poisonous plant which produces death by kidney failure

C.    a poisonous plant which produces death by rigor mortis

D.    a poisonous plant which produces death by heart attack

A.    a southern wine of France

B.     a southern wine of Italy

C.    a southern wine of England

D.    NOTA

A.       the fountain of the Muses, created by the hoof of the winged horse, Pegasus on Mount Helicon

B.       A kind of wine from Provence, France

C.       One of the Muses in greek mythology

D.       Goddess of wine making in Roman mythology

A.    Keats’s elder brother, Tom died of consumption in 1818.

B.    He was thinking of his own ensuing death

C.    He was thinking of Fanny Brawne

D.    One of his friends of his school died in 1818

A.     Goddess of Poetry

B.      An archaic word

C.     Poetic imagination

D.    Roman goddess of creation

A.      Negative Capability

B.     Romantic idealization of Nature

C.     Remote charm

D.    Romantic disposition

A.     Interest in a glorified or romanticized past

B.     Interest in the role of the poet

C.     Interest in the imagination, which intuitively connects with nature and the transcendent and develops over time.

D.     NOTA

A.      It deals with the themes of nature, transience and mortality.

B.     It is on an in ideal bird

C.     It is on negative capability

D.    NOTA

A.      It was spring

B.     It was a garden

C.     It was not far from the forest

D.    NOTA

A.      Assonance

B.      Caesura

C.       Alliteration

D.      Apostrophe

A.     Male bird

B.      Female bird

C.     Not mentioned

D.    NOTA

[See Helen Vendler…]

About The Author

TTM

Dr Tarun Tapas Mukherjee is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Bhatter College, Dantan, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. He co-founded the Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities alongside Professor Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay. Driven by his enthusiasm for Open Access and digital technology, Dr Mukherjee launched the project in 2008. Since then, he has consistently introduced and implemented measures to ensure standardization, adhering to specific international criteria.. More at https://rupkatha.com/tarun_tapas_mukherjee.php

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