Essay for Keats Ode to the Nightingale for BA students

 “Ode to a Nightingale” Summary

John Keats is one of the most famous romantic poet who dominated the 18thc literature. His poem “Ode to the Nightingale” was written in the year 1819. This poem explores the theme of death-wish of the poet. It describes the inner emotional world of the poet along with natural world. Keats’s odes, is an extraordinary example of spontaneous formal writing. 

The poet feels tired and numb at heart. He feels unconscious like a man who has drunk Hemlock or opiate or sunk into the river of Lethe. The poet is delighted to hear the voice of the  Nightingale which is singing freely and joyfully. He identifies the bird with Dryad, the Greek Goddess of the tree. He contrasts the mortality and suffering of human being with the immortality and perfect happiness of the nightingale. 

Keats desires to “ squeeze every last drop” of wine and travel to the happiest land of Nightingale. He  realises that world is a place of uncontrollable movements of illness, stress and fever. It is a place were beauty and love can never survive as time passes. So he aspires for a magical wine that will make him sing along with the Nightingale in the dark forest. Here the poet tries to escape from worldly problems and he wants to be like the Nightingale which has no difficulties.

Using the tool of poetry the poet travels along with the nightingale's dark world, deep in the  forest.

                  “ Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, / But on the viewless wings of Poesy”.

He explores the world of Nightingale which has no light because the trees block the moonlight.  He is unable to see the flowers or plants around him, but  from the smell of flowers he is able to identify the  white hawthorn, violet, musk rose and eglantine.  “The Mid- Mays eldest son” refers to Keats is able to find the month from the smell of the flower. He is obsessed by the thought of death.

The poet feels  rich to die in the world of Nightingale hearing to its song.  He recognizes that the song of the nightingale is "immortal". The voice of Nightingale heard by the ancient emperors as well as by clowns is heard by the poet.  He says that even the Biblical figure, Ruth, may have heard it during her exile. 

At the end of the poem the poet awakes from his dream world of Nightingale and returns to the world of reality. . As the bird flies away, he bids farewell, “Adieu” and keeps pondering whether the entire experience had been a reality or imagination, “waking dream.” 

 Thus the poem presents a contrast between the real world and the world of imagination, existing between human being and that of the Nightingale.