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Ode To A Nightingale

The poem "Ode to a Nightingale" describes Keats's journey into a state of negative capability while sitting in a garden in London. As he listens to the song of a nightingale, the speaker contemplates escaping human suffering and consciousness through intoxication or death. The nightingale represents a carefree state untouched by human worries or limitations. In the end, the speaker realizes he cannot truly escape through imagination and must accept the human experience.

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2K views5 pages

Ode To A Nightingale

The poem "Ode to a Nightingale" describes Keats's journey into a state of negative capability while sitting in a garden in London. As he listens to the song of a nightingale, the speaker contemplates escaping human suffering and consciousness through intoxication or death. The nightingale represents a carefree state untouched by human worries or limitations. In the end, the speaker realizes he cannot truly escape through imagination and must accept the human experience.

Uploaded by

Rockzz kamlesh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in

the garden of the Hampstead, London."Ode to a


Nightingale" is a personal poem which describes Keats's
journey into the state of negative capability.The nightingale
described experiences a type of death but does not actually
die.It was written in 1819, based on weather
conditions."Ode to a Nightingale" describes a series of
conflicts between reality and the Romantic ideal of uniting
with nature. The nightingale is also the object of empathy
and praise within the poem. However, the nightingale and
the discussion of the nightingale is not simply about the
bird or the song, but about human experience in
general.The nightingale's song within the poem is
connected to the art of music , the song is for beauty and
lacks a message of truth.The nightingale is distant and
mysterious, and even disappears at the end of the poem.
The speaker sits in a forest, listening to the beautiful song of
the nightingale. The speaker perceives “immortality” in the
figure of the bird—a creature that, the speaker believes.
According to this poem keats wants to say that, My heart is
in pain and my body feels numb and tired. I feel like I've
drunk from the poisonous hemlock plant, or like I've just
taken some kind of opiate drug and fallen into the waters of
Lethe (the river in the ancient Greek mythological
underworld that makes you forget everything). Nightingale,
I'm not jealous of how happy you sound—I feel like this
because I am too happy to hear you sing so freely and
beautifully. You are like a Dryad—a mythical tree spirit—in
your patch of overgrown greenery and shadows, singing
summer's song with all your might.
I wish I had some vintage wine that has been stored for
years deep in the belly of the earth, wine that tastes of
flowers and the countryside, of dancing, folk singing, and
happy sunshine! If I could drink a bottle of wine that would
transport me to warmer southern lands, one full of water
from the mythical Hippocrene spring that grants poetic
inspiration. The bubbles would play on the surface of the
glass and in my wine-stained mouth. I could get drunk,
forget the world, and escape with you, Nightingale, away
into the dark forest.
I long to disappear, to forget what you, Nightingale, have
never had to know. You live untouched by all the
exhaustion, sickness, and worry that come with being part
of the human world, where people sit and listen to each
other groan in pain, where disease and old age are
inevitable, and where youth fades and dies. For human
beings, even just to think is to feel suffering, heavy sadness,
and pain. In the human world beauty never lasts, and
neither does love.

I will fly far away from the human world and to you! I don't
need to get a ride from Bacchus (the god of wine). No, I can
fly on the wings of poetry instead—even if human
consciousness might confuse me and slow me down.
Nightingale, I'm already with you in my imagination! The
night is gentle, and the moon, the queen of the sky, is
sitting on her throne surrounded by her stars. But it's dark
where I'm standing, with only a small amount of light
making its way through the lush but gloomy trees and
winding, moss-covered paths.

I can't see the flowers in the forest around me, nor tell what
fragrant plants hang from the trees. The darkness surrounds
me, and I try to imagine what is growing in the surrounding
space. It's spring time, and the forest is full of grass,
shrubbery, and fruit-trees. There are hawthorns and sweet
briars, and purple violets hiding under the mulch of leaves
on the forest floor. And the musk-rose, with its luxurious
scent, will be here soon, crowded by the humming mass of
flies in the summer evening.
My mood darkens as I listen to your song, Nightingale. I've
often romanticized death, written about and personified it
in poetry, half-longing to die myself. Right now seems like a
good time to die, to end the pain of human suffering while
listening to you, Nightingale, let your ecstatic song pour out
from your soul. If I died, you'd go on singing, but your song
would be wasted on my ears.

You weren't born to die like me, immortal Nightingale! You


don't have new generations of people breathing down your
neck. The song I hear is the same one heard many, many
years ago in the time of emperors and court jesters.
Perhaps it's even unchanged since Biblical times, when Ruth
(who stuck by her mother-in-law after she herself was
widowed) stood in fields of corn. It's the same song that
would charm open the windows of ships on dangerous seas,
the same song that could be heard in the forlorn lands
where fairies dwell.

Thinking about the word "forlorn" makes me feel like I'm


alone again! Goodbye, Nightingale. My imagination can't
trick me into thinking I can really fly away with you.
Goodbye, Goodbye! Your song grows quiet as you fly past
the meadows, over the nearby stream, and up the hill-side.
Now you're in the next valley. Was this whole experience
real or an illusion? The nightingale's song has gone. Am I
awake or asleep?

The speaker wants to escape all the pressures and suffering


that come with being human, and at times muses that drink
or drugs might offer a release. That's because the speaker
feels that consciousness itself is a kind of burden—that
merely "to think is to be full of sorrow." The speaker thus
wonders if intoxication, by dulling the senses, might help
ease that sorrow. And though the speaker claims not to be
envious of the “happy” nightingale—which doesn’t seem
troubled in the same way—the bird serves as a reminder
that the speaker can’t truly escape human awareness (other
than through death). The bird, and the beauty of its song,
starts to represent freedom from the limiting, isolating
confines of the anxious human mind.

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