‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats

Happiness, sadness and loss are all things that human beings have to experience in their lives. These elements play an important role of shaping one’s life, and they define the kind of an individual that one is. An individual that have experienced great loss and sadness is likely to have a sad pessimistic life and he is likely to wish for death as a way out of his misery. On the other hand, an individual that have experienced happiness in their life is likely to have an optimistic character that enjoys life. The poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats is a sad poem that helps in illustrating the concept of loss and sadness, and how it was motivated by the losses in Keats life.

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is an eight stanza poem with ten lines in each stanza. The poem has a regular rhyme scheme; though it has an impression of a rhapsody type of poem in that Keats gives free expression to his thoughts and emotions. The poem is a free inspiration that is not controlled by a plan that was preconceived; Keats shares an experience that he is having at the time, not something that he is recalling. This is something that is happening in his mind as he listens to the nightingale song.

The first stanza is an expression of Keats sadness, ‘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’ (Line 1-3). In the second stanza he expresses his desire to forget his sadness ‘Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South’ (Line 3-5). He believes that the nightingale can help him forget the problems in his life. This stanza illustrates Keats celebration in the notion of an adored past both in classical and medieval. The third stanza is a further illustration of his desire to forget his sad life; ‘Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret’ (Line 1-3). Keats wishes to have a life like that that of the nightingale where all there is happiness unlike in his life where all he feels is sadness.

In the fourth stanza, Keats illustrates that his desire for happiness can only be achieved through poetry. ‘Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy’ (Lines 1-3). Keats believes that poetry is the only way that he can be able to connect fantasy and his world, and in the end find happiness but not by chaos and revelry. In stanza five, Keats uses a lot of imagery to show how stuck he is between the world of fantasy and the real world. This stanza helps in illustrating the confusing world of Keats, where he is so sad in his life and lingers in the fantasy world to try and forget his sadness. His fantasy world is dark and luxurious he ‘cannot see what flowers are at my feet’; he is ‘in embalmed darkness’ (Line 1-3). The darkness is important to him because it helps him to flourish his ideal creation and also to bring out some sense of supernatural setting. Stanza six is an expression of Keats obsession with death. ‘I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme’ (Line 2-3). He envisions his soul with that of the nightingale but acknowledges the fact that death will separate them. Keats cannot really be defined to want death because he fears that death will separate him with the things that he desires including his fantasies.

Stanza seven is an illustration of Keats recognition that the nightingale cannot die, he realizes that the voice of this bird has been there for centuries and the mention of Ruth demonstrates this fact. ‘The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown’ (line 3-4 ). This is the section where Keats comes to his senses and understands that he is in a fantasy world and it is a representation of some sense of maturity and truth for him. Stanza eight is where Keats returns to the real world and leaves his fantasy world of the nightingale. ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?  Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? (Line 9-10). Keats at this point is surprised because he does not understand whether he is asleep or awake. Even though he is able to connect with nature in the process of creating art, he feels disappointed with the knowledge that there are limits to his imagination and that he cannot change his current world through imagination.

John Keats was born in England in the year 1975; his life was a sad one given that his parents died when he was very young (Hough, p1). The death of his parents greatly affected him and it can be in a more abstract sense be defined to be the element that shaped his understanding for the human suffering and loss. This poem was motivated by the tragedies in his life; Keats’ life was unsatisfactory especially some time before he wrote this poem (Hough, p1). He felt alone and sad after he lost his brother to tuberculosis and the other brother left him to go to America. He had financial problems that caused him not to marry the woman he wanted because he was not in a position to support her (Hough, p1). This poem is Keats’ reaction to his life frustrations; the death wish in the poem is his recurrent attitude toward an unsatisfactory life.

This poem is one that helps define human feelings and how they try to fantasize their worlds in order to forget what their real lives look like. Fantasy world as expressed in the poem do not really help to change reality, Keats at the end of his fantasy had to go back to his old sad life. There are two main thoughts that are brought out by this poem; one is the evaluation of life in Keats eyes. Life is meant to include tears, frustrations and sometimes happiness. Keats life was always sad, he was however able to find some momentary happiness in his fantasy world. The other thought that is brought out in the poem is the concept of death. Human beings have a tendency to wish for death when things are not going so well in their lives. However death is not the solution to everything. After one dies, they are not able to solve the problems that motivated their death and so their deaths become useless.

Life can sometimes be exciting and other times sad as illustrated in this poem and the life of Keats. People need to learn how to manage the two situations without giving up. When one is sad like the situation of Keats, they can create their fantasy world to try and find some happiness. Fantasy world should however not be confused to be the real world because it can bring around some frustrations like it did with Keats. The society needs to understand that death is not an escape route to a sad life because it does not bring any solutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Keats, John. Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. Retrieved from

            https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale.

Hough, Graham Goulder. “John Keats.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica,

            Inc., 27 Oct. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Keats.