Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats

what type of Ode is this poem?

Horatian Ode - personal and introspective

what type of poem is it?

homostrophic poem - regular rhyme scheme only one deviation

the poem begins with a….

raw and emotive confession - “My heart aches…”

….. is the dominant sensation

pain

the speaker’s drunken state is seen in the…

• see-sawing rhythm

• short caesura phrases

• enjambed spilled over lines at the end of stanza 1

• rhythmic limpness

he is focused on…

listening to the nightingale song

“too happy in thine happiness”

polyptoton - realises that at some point he will die and no longer be able to hear the nightingale song

how is Keat’s avoidance of feeling highlighted?

the synesthesia and sensorial richness of his descriptions

e.g. descriptions of nightingale - ”light-winged Dryad of the trees” (like a nymph)

“shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.”

• alliteration of smooth sibilance

• seductive setting

• melodica descriptions

in stanza 2 Keats described his…

desire to escape through bacchanalian allusions (wine and drinking)

“Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,”

• metonymic associations of wine with the passing of time

• “tasting of Flora and the country green”

there is a suggestion that intoxication brings….

pleasure, not for the physical numbing but for the mental escape

“With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,”

• plosive alliteration

• personification

• allusive of a stolen kiss or secret love

in stanza 3 we find out…

the motive behind the speaker’s desire to escape

Keats struggles facing the reality that…

• to live is to suffer

• whilst he is still young there is always the reminder of aging and youth’s passing

• this transition from youth to age is seen in the line “Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thing, and dies;”

what line contradicts the idea that the head and heart / reason and emotion are opposing?

“but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs,”

in stanza 4 we see the…

emotional apex of the poem

when we think he is overcome with drunken thought we are given a sober distinction between the influence of wine versus that of art

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

• poetry is anthropomorphised as a bird

• it is self-sufficient unlike the wine God who needs his chariot for momentum and transport

• poetry provides fulfilment in itself whereas alcohol is a short term distraction for one’s pain

Keats transports himself into an ideal world from line …. to …. of stanza 4

4-7

though he transports himself he states…

“But here there is no light,”

in stanza 5 the speaker is…

• too drunk to form clear expressions

• yet, while his real eyes fail him, his mind’s eye is more activated as his other senses are made stronger

• “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet”

what imagery is most evident in this stanza?

olfactory imagery, lines 3-6

he cannot see them, yet he feels them

what highlights his ever present fear of the passing of time?

'“fast fading”

“The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”

what is the central paradox in the poem so far?

• the question asking at which point does tremendous happiness become a point of sadness?

• the awareness of fleeting joy

in stanza 6 the speaker feels so happy he contemplates…

dying there and then to avoid his joy coming to an end

how is this cognitive dissonance between living to feel happiness versus dying to lock in happiness conveyed?

• only deviation in structure in stanza 6

• no longer ABAB CDECDE instead becomes ruptured (ABAB CDEC(?)DE)

where is the rhyming rupture and how is it significant?

• “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 ecstasy!”

• no rhyme

• reflects the speakers cognitive dissonance between deep melancholy and happiness

in stanza 7 there seems to be a…

comforting irony present

the speaker envies…

the nightingale, an immortal bird whose song has been heard through the ages

what biblical reference is in this stanza?

• “Through the sad heart of Ruth”

• widow he grieved her husband’s death who stood in her tears

the immortality that the speaker refers to is not…

an existential one, but one of creative legacy and timeless resonance which Keats eventually does achieve as a poet

what is significant about the end of the 7th stanza and the start of the 8th?

• the final word being ‘forlorn’ helps encapsulate the poet’s anxiety

• yet, in the phrase “in faery lands forlorn” the word means abandoned, like distant lands

• HOWEVER, the anadiplosis on the 2nd forlorn that starts the next stanza means something unfulfilled

• as though the separate uses of the word highlight the contrast between a make believe world and reality, he is jolted back into reality

where is there evidence of a complex mix of desperation and resentment in stanza 8?

the metaphor of the ‘fancy’ (his imagination) as a cheating “deceiving elf” who he, as a poet, must rely on for inspiration

how else is his inability to control his imaginative powers symbolised in the stanza?

the symbolism in the sudden departure of the nightingale with the line “thy plaintive anthem fades”

what is significant about the last two lines of the poem?

• consolidates the ideas of blurred boundaries

• ends in ambivalence about the true sort of creativity and the root of existence

• uncertainty brings creative clarity

• negative capability, being able to sit in an uncertain state