Ode to a Nightingale is one of several odes (impassioned poetic addresses) written by the English poet John Keats. Keats is recognized as a leading figure of the Romantic movement in English literature. The Romantics emphasized emotion, sensation, the beauty of nature, and the power of the imagination in their writings.
Keats’s ode was written in 1819, when the poet was only 23 years old and suffering from tuberculosis. He died of the disease two years later. By the time he wrote “Ode to a Nightingale,” he was deeply aware of the inevitability of death.
Keats reportedly composed his poem while sitting under a plum tree in the garden of a friend. A nightingale had nested nearby, and the bird’s haunting song inspired Keats’s poetic reflections on life, death, and the immortality of beauty. “Ode to a Nightingale” has a striking sense of urgency and immediacy. This reflects the likelihood that the poem was written quickly, with little planning or preparation.
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 thy 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 Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal 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 grey 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, Clustered 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 covered 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 Called 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 ecstacy! 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 Charmed 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 famed 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?
On the most immediate level, the nightingale’s immortal song makes the poet long for escape. The enchanting music is like a drug that will bring oblivion, away from the world of “weariness” and “fever” and “fret.” The poet then imagines how he can use “Poesy”—the writing of the poem—to enter an “embalmed darkness” like death itself.
Death also means the silencing of song (“I have ears in vain”). The poet realizes that “the fancy cannot cheat so well.” He bids the bird of immortality farewell and faces his own solitude. He concludes with two of the most famous—and frequently discussed—lines in English poetry: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?”
In a half-waking state, the poet has effectively transported himself beyond the world of the singing bird. Although he expresses the anguish of a dying man, Keats also asserts the immortal power of the imagination. This imaginative power is the essence of the Romantic movement. Though tragic on a personal level, “Ode to a Nightingale” is also uplifting, because the poem itself endures as an immortal thing of beauty.
For more information on Keats, see Keats, John. See also English literature (Romantic poetry); Poetry (Romantic poetry); Romanticism.
