Ode to Nightingale

"ODE TO NIGHTINGALE"

''Ode to Nightingale'' is an immaculate piece of poetry by John Keats. It was a high watermark in romantic poetry even in the age of romanticism in which it was produced. The principle stress of the poem is the struggle between ideal and actual, pleasure and pain, imagination and reason, fullness and privation, permanence and transience, freedom and bondage. About this superb and unique creation, Middleton Murry remarks,

“For sheer loveliness, this poem is unsurpassed in the English language. It is a poem of midnight, sorrow, and beauty.”

In form and substance, the poem is romantic just like ‘’Kubla Khan’’ and ‘’The Eve of St. Agnes.’’

The first stanza of the poem describes the poet's feelings on hearing Nightingale's song. This song gives him excessive joy and he feels like a man who has drunk hemlock. The poet prepares himself for a romantic escape from this world of reality into the world of the nightingale which is full of joys, happiness, and beauty.

In the second stanza, Keats wishes for a draught of wine so that he may drink this wine and forget the actual world completely. He wants to escape from this world and join nightingale's world.

“I might drink and leave the world unseen and with thee fade away into the forest dim”.

The third stanza reveals Keats' pessimism. He calls birds better than humans because human life is full of pain, sorrows, fatigue, diseases, misery, and death. While that of the nightingale is ideal and free from these sufferings.

In the fourth stanza, Keats goes into the world of the nightingale, not with the help of wine but on the wings of poetic imagination. Here the poet desires to escape from the bitter realities of the real world into the dreamland of joy.

In the fifth stanza, the poet beautifully depicts the romantic world of nightingale. He wants to go into the forest where the nightingale sings. The poet imagines that it is dark in the forest, so he cannot see what trees and flowers are growing around him. He can recognize each flower by its smell. The sixth stanza is replete with the poet's disgust with life and he wishes for death. Here poet describes his love with death that he always regarded death as easeful. Indeed, often in his thoughts, he called upon death, so that it may end the deep suffering which life inflicted upon him. In the seventh stanza, the poet presents the nightingale as a symbol of immortality. He feels that the world of the nightingale is full of joys and happiness and that is immortal. The song of the nightingale will remain forever and he is unaware of the sorrows of the real world. In the last stanza the poet comes back to his consciousness, he regrets and feels that imagination cannot beguile reason forever. He feels that fancy cannot help us long. It can make us forget ourselves only for a short while.

As far as the thematic aspect of the poem is concerned, Keats describes a number of themes in it. Firstly, the world of mankind is contrasted with that of the nightingale. The world of human beings is full of pain, suffering, sorrows, weariness, bondage injuries, decay, diseases, and death. On the other hand, the world of the nightingale is the world of richness, vitality, happiness, deep sensuousness, natural beauty, joys, and fertility. Unlike the world of mankind, nightingale's world is immortal. The poet feels that the bird is not born to die while his death is near.

“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird”.

Second, the elements of pessimism are vivid and abundant in the poem. The poet wants to escape from the bitter realities of life and be immortal like the bird. He finds this world full of sorrows and difficulties and calls birds better than human beings.

As regards its technical aspects the poem is an immaculate and unique piece of mature poetry. There is an abundance of richness, concrete, sensuous imagery, and pictures. The style of the poem is also unique and superb. It shows Keats as a master of poetic language and art. As Robert Bridges says, “I cannot name an English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this ode”.

In order to sum up our discussion, we can say that although the poem exposes some weaker aspects of Keats as a poet such as his escapism, pessimism, and a streak of negative romanticism, by and large, it shows Keats as one of the greatest romantic poets. We can stop our writing with the surety that the poem is unique, sublime, and unsurpassed in the English language