Ode to a Nightingale

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

Introduction to the Poet and the Poem:

John Keats (1795-1821) was a great romantic poet. He acquired an immortal status in the history of English poetry. Keats’ odes are matchless in English Romantic poetry. Every thing of beauty gave him eternal joy and made him forget all the pains and sufferings of his own life. The poem was written in April 1819. Mr. Brown himself has given a firsthand account of the composition of this ode.

“In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song, and one morning he took his chair…. under a plum-tree…. When he came into the house I perceived that he had some scrapes of paper…. [which] contained his poetic feelings on the song of our nightingale.”

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is among the most popular odes. It has a strong subjective element in it. It highlights his personal life which was full of pain and misery. His own pain is compared to the joy of the nightingale. The contrast between the two worlds is so intense that he feels like escaping into the world of the nightingale. But at the end of the poem, he realises that imagination cannot be permanent and he returns to the real world full of harsh experiences. The sweet song of the nightingale also disappears.

Its Melancholy, and the Note of Pessimism

The whole poem marks a passionate melancholy. The passage describing the sorrows and misfortunes of life is deeply pessimistic. The world is full of weariness, fever, and worry. Keats wrote this poem shortly after the death of his brother Tom to whom he was deeply attached and death of Elizabeth Taylor.

The note of pessimism is found also in the lines where the poet expresses a desire to die, “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. When we remember that Keats actually died a premature death, we realise the note of unconscious prophecy in these lines, which for this reason become still more pathetic.

Sorrows of Life in General; and the Personal Griefs

The passionately personal and human character of this poem is thus obvious. It reveals Keats’s sense of the tragedy of human life in general and his sense of personal suffering in particular. The poem brings before our eyes a painful picture of the sorrows and griefs of human life, and at the same time it conveys to us the melancholy and sadness which had afflicted Keats for various reasons.

Its Rich Sensuousness and Pictorial Quality

The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats’s pictorial quality and his rich sensuousness. We have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which the poet expresses a passionate desire for some Provincial wine or the red wine from the fountain of the Muses have a rich appeal:

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 Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!

These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun, merry-making, drinking and dancing. Similarly, the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly pleasing.

Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars, looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies:

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.          

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays.

The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.

Apart from these sensuous pictures, there is also the vivid and pathetic image of Ruth when, sick for home, she stood tearful amid the alien corn. This is a highly suggestive picture calling up many associations to the mind of one who is acquainted with the Bible.

Its Style

The poem is written in a superb style. It displays Keats’s power as a master of poetic language at its highest. Keats here shows excellent skill in a choice of words and in making original and highly expressive phrases. The phrase “the blushful Hippocrene” which refers to the fountain of the Muses and its red wine looking like the blushing cheeks of a pretty girl is indeed beautiful. The line “the weariness, the fever and the fret” admirably describes the sorrows and perplexities of life.

The Romantic Character of the Poem

‘The Ode to a Nightingale’ is a highly romantic poem. Its romanticism is due to (a) its rich sensuousness, (b) its note of intense desire and its deep melancholy, (c) its suggestiveness, (d) its sweet music, and its fresh and original phrases. Three lines in the poem represent the high water-mark of pure romanticism:

The same that oft-times hath         

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam     

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

The touch of the supernatural, the mystery, and above all the suggestiveness of these lines have made them a test by which purely romantic poetry can be judged and measured.

Conclusion:

Ode to a Nightingale contains the spirit of romance and it is extremely passionate and sensuous in its descriptions and expressions. The poem, composed after John Keats heard a nightingale outside his window, is a consideration of death, the apprehension of material beauty and the fascination of a world of decline. Keats was greatly admired in the Romantic poetic circle and “Ode to a Nightingale” stands as one of his most famous poems.