Ode to a Nightingale/ John Keats

W. J. Neatby's illustration for Ode to a Nightingale

Joseph Severn's depiction of Keats listening to the nightingale

 

 

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

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,
    But being too happy in thine happiness, -
        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
                In some melodious plot
    Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                And purple-stained mouth;
    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

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 gray hairs,
    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.

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,
    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.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
    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.

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 mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    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.

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
    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
                The same that oft-times hath
    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

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 fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
    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?
 

 

 

Written in the spring of 1819, this ode was inspired by the song of a nightingale that had built its nest close to the house of a friend in Hampstead. The proper subject of the poem is not so much the bird itself as the poet's aspiration towards a life of beauty away from the oppressing world - a beauty revealed to him for a moment by listening to the bird's song.

The effect of listening to the song of a nightingale is that the poet's heart is full of aching pain and his senses are dulled, owing to the very happy participation in the happiness of the bird. The pain is the outcome of the excessive joy of the poet to think that the nightingale should thus sing in full throated ease in the carefree manner.
"My heart aches and a dowsy numbness pains,
My sense, as though of Hemlock I had drunk."

The 'Ode to a Nightingale' is one of the greatest lyrics in the English language. As Bridges writes- "I could not name an English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this Ode." According to Middleton Murray the poem is unsurpassed in the English language for "sheer loveliness"! The poem represents the fleeting experience of the poet - an intense imaginative experience in which sorrow is fused into joy, and the world of time merges with the world of eternity. It is a romantic poem, but it denies nothing of human experience; it tells the sorrows of life and it reveals lso the bitter human experiences that can be transmuted into beauty, which is truth.

The poem is above all, the high watermark in sensuousness. The poet is keenly susceptible to beauty. As no poet had more capacity for enjoyment than Keats, none exceeded him in the luxury of sorrow!

Ode to Autumn/ John Keats

ODE TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

This, the last of Keats' odes was published in 1820. The poem shows Keats in a rich mood of serenity. Autumn is not regarded here as the prelude to winter, but it is a season of mellow fruitfulness - a season of ripeness and fulfilment. The Ode gives a graphic description of the season of autumn with all its richness. The first stanza describes its gifts of ripe fruits and new crops of flowers. The second stanza gives an authentic image of autumn through living personifications like those of a reaper, a gleaner and a wine-grower. The third stanza describes the music of autumn, the plaintive singing of the gnats, the bleating of lambs, the chirp of the crickets and the soft tremble of the red breast.

In the 'Ode to Autumn', Keats wrote a poem which shows Greek spirit and Greek way of writing more than any other poem in the English language. It is classical in the true sense of the word. There is to be found here, no romantic strangeness or mystery, no emotional agitation. Everything is simple, direct and clear, and the poem is pervaded throughout by a mood of serene tranquility. Moreover, the living  personifications of autumn are exactly in the myth-making mode of the ancient Greeks.

The 'Ode to Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' may have a greater appeal by reason of their pathos and glow of emotion, but the 'Ode to Autumn' is unique in its rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness. The exqusite sense of unity and proportion leaving a single art impression, the rich but the subdued melody of the long lines, perfectly adapted tot he mood of brooding and mellow contentment, the wonderful description of Nature for the sake of Nature, tinged with that sweet sensuousness which is a trait in the poet's nature, the charming and vivid personifications of Autumn in the Greek manner, the absence of subjectivity and melancholy- all these fully deserve the eulogy of the subtlest critic. Swinburne speaks of this ode as 'perhaps the nearest to absolute perfection.'!