John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale

In the first stanza of Ode to a Nightingale Keats is feeling pain, but as he listens to the nightingale singing in the tree, he goes into a dream-like state where the nightingale’s song turns his pain into pleasure. He refers to all the senses as he imagines drinking wine, smelling flowers, seeing the greenness of the country, feeling the warmth of the sun, and becoming one with the nightingale. At the end of the second stanza, he imagines happily fading away with the bird. At the beginning of the third stanza, he again uses the word fade (pg. 438).

“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known”

He comes back to reality and is saddened by thoughts of his immortality. He realizes the bird’s world is different than his. The bird will never know the pain and suffering of life, of growing old, and facing death. In the fourth stanza, he again thinks of flying away with the nightingale, but this time not through drinking wine, but through imagination. Even though his thinking is confused and slowed, he becomes lost in the poetry of the nightingale’s song.

“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:”

He is with the bird into the night with the moon and stars (happiness, life), but there is no light (death). In the fifth stanza he again refers to the senses. Although he cannot see or feel the flowers in the darkness, he knows they are sweet. He describes the serenity of the grass, the wild fruit trees, the hawthorn, the coming musk-rose, and the murmur of the summer flies (life). But he also speaks of the “Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves” (death).

As he listens in the darkness, he dreams of a joyful death with no pain accompanied by the song of the nightingale. Then he realizes that after he dies, the bird will continue to sing. The joy and beauty of the bird’s song (nature) will endure, but he will not. The song has been heard throughout time by those who were sad and forlorn.

The last stanza begins by repeating the word forlorn which brings him back to reality. The bird flies away and its song is sad as it begins to fade, over the stream, up the hill, and into the next valley. He is referring not only to the bird, but to himself as well. The last two lines of the poem question whether he was dreaming, or whether he had seen a vision. Was the bird actually there, or in his imagination? Is there a hidden meaning? Throughout the poem, Keats jumps between life and death, happiness and sadness, dreams and reality (similar to the way Blake uses opposites). He finds peace in the beauty of life, but he also knows life’s pain and wants to escape from it. He recognizes that he is separate from nature and that the world will survive after he is gone.