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BackgroundOde to a Nightingale is a poem by John Keats, written in May, 1819. It is one of the five “Spring ode‘s”. The poem describes Keats’ journey into the state of Negative Capability. The poem explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being the most personal to Keats, making as he does a direct reference to the death in 1818 of his brother, Tom.Form & titleThe title tells us the form of the poem, the ode. An ode is a complex, long lyric poem on a serious subject, intimate, meditative; not a story, but emotions and thoughts.But it's not just any ode, it's an ode that is addressed "to" its subject. Throughout the poem, the speaker talks to the nightingale as if it were a person. The title helps set up this little trick. The "nightingale" is a bird that is known for singing at night.Form & rhythmThe ode consists of eight stanzas, each containing ten lines. The rhyme scheme (ababcdecde) has a link to the Sonnet form. The poet makes use of enjambment between stanzas two and three.Ode: long poem divided into 3 parts, describe the feelings of the poet.The sound from the beginning is melancholy, sad and sorrow.Stanza AnalysisFirst Stanza•Keats, says that his heart hurts as he just drink poison, Hemlock is a herb poison.•Lethe: In Greek mythology, "Lethe" river that made people forget all their memories if they drank from it.•The song of the nightingale is sad and dark and he see it happy, this is ironic.•He wants to clarify that the pain he feels is not because he is jealous of the bird's happiness. Instead, he is excessively happy for the bird's happiness. He's like that friend•Dryad: is a nymph (female spirit) that lives in the trees that love and enjoy nature. personifications of natural features. And it is a Greek mythology.•There's really no way to dance around it: the speaker is comparing his feeling to being totally strung out on drugs.•"Opium" is a powerful drug made from the poppy flower.Stanza I—I was falling asleep after taking opiates when I heard a nightingale singing in the beechen forest.Second Stanza•Keats wishes for wine that tastes like “Dance” and the “country green” so that he could be drunk with the nightingale to forget his sorrow.•Keats longs for a drink of wine or some other spirit that has been kept cool deep in the earth. "Vintage" wine is made from grapes from the same harvest, and people often refer to a particular year at a winery as a "vintage."•He wants wine to just start bubbling up out of the ground, as if you could stick a tap right into the soil and let the good times flow.•Good wine needs to be kept cool, the earth is like a giant wine cellar.•Line 3, Flora: goddess of flowers and fertility. If you drink wine out of the earth, it's no surprise that it might taste like flowers ("Flora") and plants ("country green").•Not only does the earth's wine taste like flowers, but it also tastes like dancing, song, and happiness ("sunburnt mirth"). Specifically, he is thinking of "Provencal," a region in the south of France known for its wine and sun.•The speaker wants to stick the south of France, or just the South in general, into a bottle ("beaker"). He wants to distill the earth down to its powerful, intoxicating essence.•Hippocrene is a spring sacred to the Muses in Greek mythology. Drinking its waters inspired poets. He wants to drink something that will make him a great poet…and that'll get him drunk. – Keats is showing off his knowledge of Greek mythology again.•The speaker describes the appearance of the wine. It has little bubbles at that burst, or "wink," at the brim of the beaker, like little eyes.•It also stains your mouth purple when you drink it, like any strong red wine will do.•He wants to get drunk on this magical wine so that he can leave the "world" without anyone noticing and just "fade" into the dark forest with the nightingale.Stanza II—I’d like a cup of red wine to soothe my trouble.Third Stanza•Keats lists things that the nightingale “has never known,” such as palsy, and solemnly admits that in the human world, youth, beauty, and love don’t last forever. He dreams of "fading" out of the world, of just disappearing in a very quiet way.He dreams of "fading" out of the world, of just disappearing in a very quiet way.•That's a pretty bleak view of the world, but it just goes to show how much of an effect the nightingale has had on him. Compared to the nightingale's carefree song, our voices sound like groans.•In this section, Keats confronts one of his favorite enemies in which he tries magically to stop time.•Time is the speaker's enemy because it causes young and beautiful people to turn old, "pale," thin as a ghost, and, eventually, dead as a doornail.•The world is a place where any kind of thinking leads to depressing thoughts and worries. There are no thoughts that can ultimately bring joy or peace: thinking itself is the problem.Stanza III—The nightingale was singing in ecstasy while I am suffering on earth.Fourth Stanza•Keats decides that he will not use wine to float away with the bird. “Though the dull brain perplexes,” he tells the bird to fly away, so that he can follow it on the wings of poetry.•All this thinking about how depressing the world is makes the speaker think, "Get me outta here!" He needs to hatch an escape plan.•He wants fly away to join the nightingale in its refuge from the world. But he knows that the booze isn't going to take him. He can't rely on Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, or any of Bacchus's buddies ("pards"), which is what he wanted earlier in the poem.•Instead of wine, he's going to fly on the wings of his own poetry. Poetry's wings are invisible, or "viewless."•He's hopeful that poetry will take him to the nightingale's world even though his brain is not so helpful in making the trip. His brain confuses him and slows him down.•And, the, all of a sudden, he's with the nightingale. How did that happen? Count us slightly suspicious of how he can be "already with" the bird, even though he just complained about how his brain was such a big roadblock.•One possibility is that he joins the nightingale in his dreams, because the imagery in this section is associated with darkness and night.•He is in the kingdom of the night, which is soft and "tender," and the moon is visible in the sky. The imagery is more fanciful and imaginative here.•The phrase "tender is the night" was made famous by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used it as the title of one of his novels.•The moon is surrounded by her attendants ("fays"), the stars. Despite all these sources of light, there is no light in the nightingale's world beyond what filters down through the trees.•What he is really describing in this complicated-sounding line is the fact that the nightingale lives in the forest, where trees block the light. "Verdurous glooms," just means the darkness that is caused by plants getting in the way of the moon.•Still, the nightingale's home sounds like a magical place, something out of a fairy tale.Stanza IV—I wish I could fly to the moon together with the nightingale.Fifth stanza•Keats writes that although he can’t see the different flowers, he can use each flower’s scent to label them in the “embalmèd darkness.”•He remains in the nightingale's nighttime world. (Get it? The night-ingale's home is the night? Keats, you're so clever!)•Without light, the speaker can't see the flowers on the forest floor or the plants that produce that pleasant smell ("soft incense") in the trees. (We don't know if he's talking about the trees themselves or something that grows on them...)•Marco! Polo! The speaker is still groping around in the dark, but he's having fun.•Because he can't see, he has to guess what "sweet" flowers and plants he smells, which depends on what month it is.It's a delicious guessing game.•The darkness is "embalmed," where "balm" is a sweet-smelling substance like a perfume.•He's guessing all kinds of different plants: "Grass!' "Fruit tree!" "Wait, wait, I know this one: white hawthorn! No, it's eglantine!"•Or maybe he smells all of them at once, like a bouquet.•The speaker names more plants that he smells in the darkness. He also begins listing things that he can hear. This section all relates to the experience of being alone in a dark – but not a frightening – forest.•He sees violets, a summer flower, and the musk rose, a flower that blooms in May. The dew of the musk rose is intoxicating, like the wine he spoke of earlier.•He hears the sound of flies on a summer evening.•In short, he seems to experience both spring and summer at the same time, which tells us that we have left the world of strict reality. As Dorothy might say, we're not in Kansas anymore.Stanza V—I realize that I was in a beautiful garden full of fragrant flowers.Sixth stanza•The stanzas in this poem actually connect seamlessly. At the end of stanza 5, the speaker moved from smells to sounds. Now he says that he is listening in the darkness.•The experience of being alone in the dark seems related to the experience of death, and he thinks maybe death wouldn't be so bad. "This is easy," he thinks. "I could get used to this."•Death would be another way to free himself of all his worldly cares. Maybe he's confusing death for sitting on a beach in Barbados….•This is turning into a love story between the speaker and death. The speaker whispers sweet nothings to death. And by whisper we mean, "writes rhyming poetry about." Yeah.•It's true: Keats was obsessed with the idea of death, and he often wrote about it.•Line 54 is mysterious: we think it means either that he wants death to take the air from his lungs, or that the air takes his breath along with his verses.•He's really quite taken with this death idea. While in the world of the nightingale, he thinks it would be "rich to die." Many people are afraid that death will be empty, but richness is associated with an abundance of good things, which is almost the opposite of emptiness.•He'd like to go out quietly, in the middle of the night. He'd just stop existing: "cease."•This part of the poem is kind of creepy, because Keats did die very young.•He wants to die at midnight, while listening to the nightingale singing.•We were wondering what happened to the nightingale. He seems to forget about the nightingale at the beginning of the stanzas and then return to it at the end, as if he suddenly remembered: "Oh, right: this is supposed to be a poem about a bird!"•The nightingale is kind of like a poet, sending its voice into the air just as Keats sends his rhyme into the air. The bird's music expresses its "soul." Birds have souls? This one does.•The bird is completely lost in the moment of pure joy and "ecstasy."•Keats has been “half in love” with the idea of dying. The nightingale’s song would make dying then and the re easier, but his ears would then only be able to hear the bird’s song “in vain.”•He imagines what would happen after the moment of his death. Basically, the bird would keep singing as if nothing had happened.•The speaker would still have "ears," of course: or at least. his corpse would. But the ears would be useless ("vain") because there is no brain to process the sounds.Stanza VI—The nightingale, regardless of my imminent death, kept singing in an ecstasy. Her melody was floating over the grassland aimlessly since her bosom friend cannot hear it any longer.Seventh stanza•He thinks that the nightingale must be immortal: it can't die.•Being immortal, the nightingale is not followed by future generations, which are metaphorically "hungry" in that they take the place of their parents. This is a very pessimistic view of the cycle of life. Basically, the younger folks are hunting down their own parents to run them off the planet.•So he doesn't necessarily mean that each nightingale is immortal. He means that the nightingale's voice is immortal, because all nightingales produce the same beautiful, haunting sound.•His talk of generations leads him to think of human history.•Emperors and clowns in the old days listened to the same voice of the nightingale that he hears now How old? The reference to emperors makes us think of Ancient Rome. Keats was an Italian buff.•The speaker moves slightly further back through history, from Imperial Rome to the Old Testament of the Bible •The Book of Ruth is one of the lesser-known books in the Hebrew Bible. The story goes that Ruth married a guy and moved to a new country. Then her husband died, and Ruth's mother-in-law told her to return home and get married again. But Ruth was like, "I'm totally loyal to you and can't leave you." She supports her mother-in-law by working in the fields of this (to her) completely strange and random place. Eventually she finds a new husband. The end.•Keats imagines that Ruth heard the nightingale's song while she was working in the fields in this foreign or "alien"place, and it caused her to start weeping.•After it flies out the window, the nightingale is alone and abandoned – "forlorn" – in this strange land.•Keats comments on the bird’s immortality, saying it sang for emperors “[i]n ancient days.” He also writes that the bird’s song could open “magic casements.”Stanza VII—The nightingale’s melody has magical power to arouse the nostalgia of Ruth, a female in the Bible. Eighth stanza•Stanza 8 Summary of death, but the spell is broken when the bird flies away unexpectedly. The entire poem is characterized by the speaker's "altered" mental state, which he claims is not due to alcohol or drugs, although he compares it to these things.•Keats halts his adoration of the nightingale to concentrate on himself. He is saddened by the bird’s flight elsewhere and by his seeming lack of imagination.Stanza VIII—The nightingale’s melody faded away, but I was still absorbed in it. I was half awake and half asleep. More to knowSynesthesia: Describes one sensation in terms of another (i.e. sound as taste, color as sound)Diction/Style:Uses archaic words (beechen; thine, thou, thee) Elevated Vocabulary: verdurous, palsy, plaintive anthem, embalmed, lustrousFigures of Speech Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem.Alliterationof h emlock I h ad drunk (line 2)d ull opiate to the d rains (line 3)S ingest of s ummer (line 10)d eep-d elved earth (line 12)Provençal s ong, and s unburnt mirth (line 14)W ith b eaded b ubbles w inking (line 17)And w ith thee f ade a w ay into the f orest dim (line 20)F ade f ar away, dissolve, and quite f orget (line 21)b reezes b lown (line 39)w inding mossy w ays (line 40)F ast f ading violets cover'd up in leaves; (line 47)And m id-M ay's eldest child (line 48)m any a m uséd rhyme (line 53)s elf-s ame s ong (line 65)s ole s elf (line 72)AnaphoraWhere 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 sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs,Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes (lines 25-29)ApostropheThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! (line 61)AssonanceMy sense, as though of hem lock I had drunk (line 2)Of beech en green (line 9)sun burntmirth (line 14)MetaphorO for a beaker full of the warm South (line 15) Comparison of the South to a liquid on the viewless wings of Poesy (line 33) Comparison of poetry to a birdPersonificationWhere Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes (line 29) Comparison of Beauty to a person the Queen-Moon is on her throne (line 36) Comparison of the moon to a personSimileForlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! (lines 71-72) Comparison of the word forlorn to a bellMeter.......The meter of the poem consists mainly of iambic pentameter, as lines 1-5 of the first stanza demonstrate. ........1...................2...................3.................4. (5)My HEART..|..aches,AND..|..a DROW..|..sy NUMB..|..ness PAINS........1......................2................3............4. (5)My SENSE,..|..as THOUGH..|..of HEM..|..lock I..|..had DRUNK,......1................2................3.............4. (5)Or EMP..|..tied SOME..|..dull OP..|..iate TO..|..the DRAINS......1................2..................3.......,\...........4. (5)One MIN..|..ute PAST,..|..and LETH..|..e- WARDS..|..had SUNK:......1................2................3.............4 (5)'Tis NOT..|..through EN..|..vy OF..|..thy HAP..|..py LOTHowever, the eighth line of each stanza is in iambic trimiter, as the following lines demonstrate.......1..............2.. (3)In SOME..|..mel O..|..dious PLOT...............(line 8)......(Read-dious as a single syllable)......1.................2 (3)And PUR..|..ple-STAIN..|..éd MOUTH..........(line 18).......1.................2.. (3)And LEAD..|..en-EYED..|..de SPAIRS..........(line 28)Themes1- Happiness"happiness" or "unhappiness" a more appropriate theme for "Ode to a Nightingale"? We're not sure. The speaker is mighty unhappy about the demands placed on him by life, time, and age. He hates to consider that young, beautiful people – the Romantic A-list – will eventually be old and incoherent. But he claims that the "ache" his heart feels is due to extreme happiness for the nightingale, so we'll have to take his word for it. He seems content enough, at least, to have an "I could die happy" moment around the middle of the poem.2- Theme of MortalityThe speaker of "Ode to a Nightingale" fools himself into believing that the nightingale is immortal, or at least its song is. But this statement seems only to give him another excuse to complain about human mortality – a common complaint in Keats's poetry. The nightingale's song echoes through generations of history, from Ancient Greece to Biblical times through the present. Keats was maybe the most "romantic" (notice the small "r') of the British Romantic poets, and he might have agreed with the saying that you shouldn't trust anyone over thirty. It seems that the worst aspect of death is not that old people must die, but that young people must turn into old people who die. The poem seeks an escape from this cycle.3-Theme of TransienceThe fleeting nature of happiness and youth is one of the great themes in Keats's Great Odes. In "Ode to a Nightingale," the speaker manages to imagine himself into such a state: the nightingale's world. But the imagination is not powerful enough to carry on the fiction after the nightingale has flown away, and his waking vision ends after only a few stanzas of bliss.4-Theme of Man and the Natural WorldThe speaker of "Ode to a Nightingale" loves nature, but he can't get on board with the whole natural-things-have-to-die-sometime thing. He even fancies that the nightingale is some immortal, godlike creature. However, nature is his best hope for escape from the world of work, stress, responsibility, and complicated human relationships. Although he begins the poem sitting just outside of a wooded area, he will not be satisfied until he can experience the forest from the perspective of one of its creatures: from the inside. He imagines becoming intoxicated from the smells of all the forest plants and flowers.Reflection questions1. In Ode to a Nightingale, what images of sound, sight, smell, taste, or touch have led you on a journey of the imagination back to some remembered past occurrence？2. What are metaphors used in ode to a nightingale?Metaphors: · 'The viewless wings of Poesy' (stanza 4, line 3): Poetry cannot obviously have any wings literally. By using this metaphor, the poet wants to say how he wants to escape with the bird using the fastest method possible, on the wings one his poetry through his imagination. · 'Queen-Moon is on her throne' (stanza 4, line 6) : Keats is comparing the moon to a queen. · 'No hungry generations tread thee down' (stanza 7, line 2): 'hungry generations' is a metaphor for the critics who initially slammed Keat's works. · 'A beaker full of the warm South': The poet is referring to the taste of wine from the tropical southern counties. · 'Deceiving elf': The poet is trying to call the nightingale a conniving temptress, who was alluring him into a trap with its beautiful signing. E.G. O for a beaker full of the warm South (line 15) -Comparison of the South to a liquid；on the viewless wings of Poesy (line 33) -Comparison of poetry toa bird3. What does the nightingale mean to Keats?4. Characteristic of Keats’ style is the use of enumeration (listing) to develop different ideas in his poem. Note a few examples of Keats using such a device.Bibliography1. "The principal stress of the poem is a struggle between ideal and actual: inclusive terms which, however, contain more particular antitheses of pleasure and pain, of imagination and common sense reason, of fullness and privation, of permanence and change, of nature and the human, of art and life, freedom and bondage, waking and dream."Fogle, Richard. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, in Stillinger, Jack, Keats's Odes, Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 19682. "But, of course, the nightingale is not thought to be literally dying. The point is that the deity or the nightingale can sing without dying. But, as the ode makes clear, man cannot—or at least not in a visionary way."Perkins, David, The Quest for Permanence: The Symbolism of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959Summary:•He cannot divorce illusion from reality.•This poem expresses the contrast between the happy world of natural loveliness & human world of agony.•At the time that Keats completed the poem (May 1819), death and its meaning were his constant companions.•In this poem, Keats not only expresses his raptures upon hearing the beautiful songs of the nightingale and his desire to go to the ethereal world of beauty together with the bird, but also shows his deep sympathy for and his keen understanding of human miseries in the society in which he lived.My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe1-wards had sunk:'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,But being too happy in thine happiness,—That thou, light-wingéd Dryad2of the treesIn some melodious plotOf beechen3green, and shadows numberless,Singest of summer in full-throated ease (10)O, for a draught4of vintage! that hath beenCool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,Tasting of Flora5and the country green,Dance, and Provençal6song, and sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,7With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,And purple-stainéd mouth;That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,And with thee fade away into the forest dim: (20)Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forgetWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, 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 sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs,Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow (30)Away! away! for I will fly to thee,Not charioted by Bacchus8and his pards,9But 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 blownThrough verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways (40)I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,But, in embalméd10darkness, guess each sweetWherewith the seasonable month endowsThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;11Fast 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 (50)Darkling12I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death,Call'd him soft names in many a muséd 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 abroadIn such an ecstasy!Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—To thy high requiem13become a sod (60)Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth,14when, sick for home,She stood in tears amid the alien corn;The same that oft-times hathCharm'd magic casements,15opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn (70)Forlorn! the very word is like a bellTo toll me back from thee to my sole self!Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so wellAs she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fadesPast the near meadows, over the still stream,Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deepIn the next valley-glades:Was it a vision, or a waking dream?Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? (80)Notes1. Lethe: In Greek mythology, the river of forgetfulness, which flows through Hades. Drinking its water results in loss of memory.2. Dryad: In Greek mythology, a forest nymph (minor goddess).3. beechen: (1) Having to do with beech trees; (2) having to do with hardwood trees of the beech family.4. draught: Cup; glass; drink.5. lora: (1) In Roman mythology, the goddess of flowers; (2) flowers.6. Provençal: Having to do with Provence, a region in southern France.Provençal troubadors (poet-musicians) were renowned for the love songs they sang.8. Bachus: Roman name for Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry.9. pards: Leopards or panthers.10. embalméd: Fragrant; sweet-smelling.11. eglantine: Rose, usually with pink flowers.12. Darkling: In the dark.13. requiem: Hymn for the dead.14. Ruth: Subject of the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. A resident of Moab in the south of present-day Jordan, she left her native land to live in Bethlehem, five miles south of present-day Jerusalem, where she worked as a gleaner (one who gathers a grain harvest). She marries a Jew named Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of Israel's King David.15. The same . . . casements: The same nightingale song that passed through magical windows。
Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London. According to Keats's friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near his home in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the bird's song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. "Ode to a Nightingale" is a personal poem that describes Keats' journey into the state of Negative Capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems, and it explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being particularly personal to Keats.The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but it does not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate that humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world and sees himself dead—as a "sod" over which the nightingale sings. The contrast between the immortal nightingale and mortal man, sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination. The presence of weather is noticeable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, which brought nightingales all over the heath. Many critics favor "Ode to a Nightingale" for its themes but some believe that it is structurally flawed because the poem sometimes strayed from its main idea. "Ode to a Nightingale" describes a series of conflicts between reality and the Romantic ideal of uniting with nature. In the words of Richard Fogle, "The principal stress of the poem is a struggle between ideal and actual: inclusive terms which, however, contain more particular antitheses of pleasure and pain, of imagination and commonsense reason, of fullness and privation, of permanence and change, of nature and the human, of art and life, freedom and bondage, waking and dream."[22] Of course, the nightingale's song is the dominant image and dominant "voice" within the ode. 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. This is not to say that the song is a simple metaphor, but it is a complex image that is formed through the interaction of the conflict voices of praise and questioning.AnalysisThe "Ode to a Nightingale" is a regular ode. All eight stanzas have ten pentameter lines and a uniform rhyme scheme. Although the poem is regular in form, it leaves the impression of being a kind of rhapsody; Keats is allowing his thoughts and emotions free expression. One thought suggests another and, in this way, the poem proceeds to a somewhat arbitrary conclusion. The poem impresses the reader as being the result of free inspiration uncontrolled by a preconceived plan. The poem is Keats in the act of sharing with the reader an experience he is having rather than recalling an experience. The experience is not entirely coherent. It is what happens in his mind while he is listening to the song of a nightingale.Three main thoughts stand out in the ode. One is Keats' evaluation of life; life is a vale of tears and frustration. The happiness which Keats hears in the song of the nightingale has made him happy momentarily but has been succeeded by a feeling of torpor which in turn is succeeded by the conviction that life is not only painful but also intolerable. His taste of happiness in hearing the nightingale has made him all the more aware of the unhappiness of life. Keats wants to escape from life, not by means of wine, but by a much more powerful agent, the imagination.The second main thought and the main theme of the poem is Keats' wish that he might die and berid of life altogether, providing he could die as easily and painlessly as he could fall asleep. The preoccupation with death does not seem to have been caused by any turn for the worse in Keats' fortunes at the time he wrote the ode (May 1819). In many respects Keats' life had been unsatisfactory for some time before he wrote the poem. His family life was shattered by the departure of one brother to America and the death from tuberculosis of the other. His second volume of poetry had been harshly reviewed. He had no gainful occupation and no prospects, since he had abandoned his medical studies. His financial condition was insecure. He had not been well in the fall and winter of 1818-19 and possibly he was already suffering from tuberculosis. He could not marry Fanny Brawne because he was not in a position to support her. Thus the death-wish in the ode may be a reaction to a multitude of troubles and frustrations, all of which were still with him. The heavy weight of life pressing down on him forced "Ode to a Nightingale" out of him. Keats more than once expressed a desire for "easeful Death," yet when he was in the final stages of tuberculosis he fought against death by going to Italy where he hoped the climate would cure him. The death-wish in the ode is a passing but recurrent attitude toward a life that was unsatisfactory in so many ways.The third main thought in the ode is the power of imagination or fancy. (Keats does not make any clear-cut distinction between the two.) In the ode Keats rejects wine for poetry, the product of imagination, as a means of identifying his existence with that of the happy nightingale. But poetry does not work the way it is supposed to. He soon finds himself back with his everyday, trouble-filled self. That "fancy cannot cheat so well / As she is fam'd to do," he admits in the concluding stanza. The imagination is not the all-powerful function Keats, at times, thought it was. It cannot give more than a temporary escape from the cares of life.Keats' assignment of immortality to the nightingale in stanza VII has caused readers much trouble. Keats perhaps was thinking of a literal nightingale; more likely, however, he was thinking of the nightingale as a symbol of poetry, which has a permanence.Keats' evocative power is shown especially in stanza II where he associates a beaker of wine "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim," with sunny France and the "sunburnt mirth" of the harvesters, and in his picture in stanza VII of Ruth suffering from homesickness "amid the alien corn." The whole ode is a triumph of tonal richness of that adagio verbal music that is Keats' special contribution to the many voices of poetry.Analysis of Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats在诗歌的第一节里，诗人主要描写夜莺的歌声给诗人带到了飘飘欲仙的忘我境界，在艰难的现实生活里，诗人感到无情命运对其压迫产生的痛楚：My heart aches，and a drowsy numbness pain My sense，as though of hemlock I had drunk 诗人的心里痛苦，困顿麻木，就象吃了鸦片一样，但是痛苦带来的麻木又使诗人感到一丝慰藉：Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past，and Lethe-wards had sunk；列撕忘川是哈帝斯冥城里的一条让人忘记过去的河流。
ode to a nightingale《夜莺颂》John Keats 约翰·济慈Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn 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 hathCharmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.在失掉了的仙域里引动窗扉饿的世代无法将你蹂躏永生的鸟,你不会死去今夜,我偶然听到的歌曲当使古代的帝王和村夫喜悦或许这同样的歌也曾激荡露丝忧郁的心,使她不禁落泪站在异邦的谷田里想著家就是这声音常常一个美女望著大海险恶的浪花1.Thou wast not born for death, immortal B ird! A2.No hungry generations tread thee d own; b3.The voice I hear this passing night was h eard a4.In ancient days by emperor and cl own: b5.Perhaps the self-same song that found a p ath c6.Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, d7.She stood in tears amid the alien corn; e8.The same that oft-times h ath c9.Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam d10.Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. eThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,She stood in tears amid the alien corn;The same that oft-times hathCharmed magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.7Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 永生的鸟,你不会死去wast：古代用法，be的第二人称单数过去式。
