{"id":83,"date":"2019-05-09T18:15:18","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T18:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/ode-to-a-nightingale-by-john-keats-ode\/"},"modified":"2023-12-06T21:13:31","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T21:13:31","slug":"ode-to-a-nightingale-by-john-keats-ode","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/provincialenglish\/chapter\/ode-to-a-nightingale-by-john-keats-ode\/","title":{"raw":"\u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d by John Keats (Ode)","rendered":"\u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d by John Keats (Ode)"},"content":{"raw":"\"Oil\r\n

Biography<\/h1>\r\nJohn Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. His father helped manage businesses, an inn and a livery stable, owned by his father-in-law, John Jennings. His childhood was traumatized by the death of his father in a riding accident in April of 1804 and his mother\u2019s hasty remarriage to William Rawlings, who replaced Keats\u2019s father as the family property manager but not, apparently, as a responsible father figure. Conflicts over the dispersal of John Jennings\u2019s considerable estate after his death broke the family apart and would plague Keats with financial problems all of his life, though his share of the estate, entangled in court proceedings, would have been considerable. Keats and his sister and two brothers went off to live with their grandmother.\r\n\r\nEventually, the family did reconcile, and Keats did well at John Clarke\u2019s school in Enfield, where, despite his small size, he was an excellent athlete and a prizewinning student, popular with the other boys at the school. Tragedy struck again when Keats\u2019s mother died in March 1810. Her mother appointed a family friend, Richard Abbey, executor of her estate.\r\n\r\nKeats chose\u2014or had chosen for him\u2014medicine as his career. In the summer of 1810, he began work as apprentice to the family doctor, Thomas Hammond, and he was accepted into medical school at Guy\u2019s Hospital in October of 1815. He did well, and in July of 1816, he earned the degree, which would qualify him to practice as a pharmacist, physician, and surgeon.\r\n\r\nKeats continued his friendship with Charles Clarke, whose father was headmaster of the school they attended together. Clarke encouraged Keats\u2019s budding interest in writing poetry, and he introduced Keats to the radical editor Leigh Hunt, with whom Clarke had shared some of Keats\u2019s work.\u00a0 Hunt was impressed, especially with the early sonnet \u201cOn First Looking into Chapman\u2019s Homer,\u201d written in October of 1816, after Clarke had loaned Keats George Chapman\u2019s translation of Homer\u2019s great epic poems, The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey<\/em>. Keats was a member now of the Hunt circle\u2014he met poet Percy Shelley in December. Soon they were seen, justifiably so, as the rising starts of English poetry.\r\n\r\nAbbey was, understandably, furious that Keats was giving up medicine to be a poet, especially given that the considerable expense of attending medical school would exacerbate Keats\u2019s financial problems. Keats\u2019s first book, simply titled Poems<\/em>, appeared in March of 1817, but it was hardly a commercial success. He spent the next six months working on his long poem, Endymion<\/em>, about the moon goddess Cynthia, who falls in love with the mortal shepherd Endymion and eventually assumes mortal shape herself so that they can be together. It was published in 1818 to indifferent reviews and poor sales. Still, Keats's reputation was growing, and he was enjoying an active social life, travelling throughout the English countryside (on walking tours, mainly) and partying with a large group of London\u2019s artists and poets, Shelley and Wordsworth among the most prominent.\r\n\r\nIn December of 1818, Keats\u2019s brother Tom died of tuberculosis. His other brother, George, had immigrated to America, and Keats, always the responsible oldest brother, cared for Tom during his last days. The sorrow of Tom\u2019s death coincided with some cruel reviews of Keats\u2019s work, his continuing financial issues, and his own failing health, but his voluminous correspondence to his friends reveals the extent to which he was determined to keep his spirits up. A new relationship with his neighbour Frances Brawne helped him during this trying time.\r\n\r\nDespite\u2014perhaps because of\u2014symptoms, which Dr. Keats recognized as the onset of tuberculosis, he worked with determined intensity, completing his great poems, including \u201cThe Eve of St. Agnes,\u201d \u201cOde to a Nightingale,\u201d \u201cOde on a Grecian Urn,\u201d \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci,\u201d and \u201cTo Autumn,\" by the end of 1819. He became unofficially engaged to Fanny, to the consternation of her mother, who was doubtful of Keats\u2019s prospects, and Keats\u2019s friends, who did not warm to her. His final book (recognized now as a milestone of English poetry), Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems<\/em>, was published in July 1820.\r\n\r\nAs his health continued to deteriorate, Keats sailed off to Italy with his close friend, the artist Joseph Severn, hoping the mild Italian climate would revive him. He saw Fanny for the last time in September of 1820. He lingered in Rome for some months before tuberculosis claimed him, as it had his brother and mother, in February of 1821.\r\n

Ode to a Nightingale<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n
Published 1819<\/div>\r\nMy heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains\r\nMy sense, as though of hemlock[footnote]A highly poisonous plant.[\/footnote] I had drunk,\r\nOr emptied some dull opiate to the drains\r\nOne minute past, and Lethe[footnote]In Greek mythology, the river of forgetfulness in the underworld.[\/footnote]-wards had sunk:\r\n'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,\r\nBut being too happy in thine happiness,\u2014\r\nThat thou, light-winged Dryad[footnote]In Greek mythology, a spirit that resides in trees.[\/footnote] of the trees\r\nIn some melodious plot\r\nOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,\r\nSingest of summer in full-throated ease.\r\n\r\nO, for a draught of vintage! that hath been\r\nCool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,\r\nTasting of Flora and the country green,\r\nDance, and Proven\u00e7al[footnote]Provence is a region in southeastern France, known for its natural beauty.[\/footnote] song, and sunburnt mirth!\r\nO for a beaker full of the warm South,\r\nFull of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,[footnote]In Greek mythology, a spring on Mount Helicon.\u00a0 Drink from the stream and you will be inspired to write poetry.[\/footnote]\r\nWith beaded bubbles winking at the brim,\r\nAnd purple-stained mouth;\r\nThat I might drink, and leave the world unseen,\r\nAnd with thee fade away into the forest dim:\r\n\r\nFade far away, dissolve, and quite forget\r\nWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,\r\nThe weariness, the fever, and the fret\r\nHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;\r\nWhere palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,\r\nWhere youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;[footnote]Keats\u2019s younger brother Tom died of tuberculosis at just nineteen years of age. Keats, trained as a physician, cared for him. Keats himself, like his mother and brother before him, would also die of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-five. He knew he had the illness when he wrote this poem in 1819.[\/footnote]\r\nWhere but to think is to be full of sorrow\r\nAnd leaden-eyed despairs,\r\nWhere Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,\r\nOr new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.\r\n\r\nAway! away! for I will fly to thee,\r\nNot charioted by Bacchus[footnote]The Roman god of wine, agriculture, fertility, and general partying. His chariot was pulled by leopards, the \u201cpards\u201d referenced later in the same line.[\/footnote] and his pards,\r\nBut on the viewless wings of Poesy,\r\nThough the dull brain perplexes and retards:\r\nAlready with thee! tender is the night,\r\nAnd haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,\r\nCluster'd around by all her starry Fays[footnote]Fairies and\/or elves.[\/footnote];\r\nBut here there is no light,\r\nSave what from heaven is with the breezes blown\r\nThrough verdurous[footnote]Lushly green vegetation.[\/footnote] glooms and winding mossy ways.\r\n\r\nI cannot see what flowers are at my feet,\r\nNor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,\r\nBut, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet\r\nWherewith the seasonable month endows\r\nThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;\r\nWhite hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;\r\nFast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;\r\nAnd mid-May's eldest child,\r\nThe coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,\r\nThe murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.\r\n\r\nDarkling[footnote]In the dark.[\/footnote] I listen; and, for many a time\r\nI have been half in love with easeful Death,\r\nCall'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,\r\nTo take into the air my quiet breath;\r\nNow more than ever seems it rich to die,\r\nTo cease upon the midnight with no pain,\r\nWhile thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad\r\nIn such an ecstasy!\r\nStill wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain\u2014\r\nTo thy high requiem become a sod.\r\n\r\nThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!\r\nNo hungry generations tread thee down;\r\nThe voice I hear this passing night was heard\r\nIn ancient days by emperor and clown:\r\nPerhaps the self-same song that found a path\r\nThrough the sad heart of Ruth,[footnote]In the Bible, Ruth moves with her mother-in-law to Jerusalem after the death of her husband, though she is not herself Jewish. She misses her home in Moab, but sacrifices her own happiness to be with and protect her mother-in-law.[\/footnote] when, sick for home,\r\nShe stood in tears amid the alien corn;\r\nThe same that oft-times hath\r\nCharm'd magic casements, opening on the foam\r\nOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.\r\n\r\nForlorn! the very word is like a bell\r\nTo toll me back from thee to my sole self!\r\nAdieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well\r\nAs she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.\r\nAdieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades\r\nPast the near meadows, over the still stream,\r\nUp the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep\r\nIn the next valley-glades:\r\nWas it a vision, or a waking dream?\r\nFled is that music:\u2014Do I wake or sleep?\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Analysis<\/h1>\r\n

Theme<\/h2>\r\nAs the poem opens, the speaker expresses heartache and despair. He contrasts this with the summer song of the nightingale, whose happiness he envies. He wishes he had a magic potion that would transport him to the nightingale\u2019s world, where he could forget about the trials and tribulations of his own life.\r\n\r\nBy virtue of his poetic imagination, the speaker does imagine he enters the nightingale\u2019s magical world of tender nights, starry skies, and fragrant flowers. He is struck by the immortality of the nightingale\u2019s song in contrast to his own mortality and dark thoughts. He hears the birdsong on this day and imagines Ruth of the Bible hearing it and remembering fondly her homeland.\r\n\r\nHe is jolted back to reality as the nightingale\u2019s song fades away. He is left disoriented by the sensuous experience which has both pleased and confused him.\r\n\r\nThe theme of the poem is that nature\u2019s beauty, represented by the nightingale\u2019s song, can take us away from the harsh realities of life, but eventually, we will need to face and cope with them.\r\n

Form<\/h2>\r\nThe poem is, as its title proclaims, an ode. An ode is a medium-length to long poem, ranging from about 36 to about 210 lines in length, formal in tone, and usually on a serious topic that has a philosophical slant to it. Odes tend to be in iambic pentameter and have regular rhyme schemes, but the ode form is determined by the author rather than prescribed.\r\n\r\n\u201cOde to a Nightingale\" is in iambic pentameter, with each of its eight ten-line stanzas using an ababcdecde rhyme scheme.\r\n

Figurative Language<\/h2>\r\nThe nightingale\u2019s song is a synecdoche, the use of a part to represent the whole. The famous aphorism \u201cthe pen is mightier than the sword\u201d is built upon synecdoche, the pen representing the written word and the sword representing warfare. The nightingale\u2019s song is a synecdoche for the beauty and the permanence of nature, in that Keats heard it and celebrated it in 1819; Ruth of the Bible heard it two thousand years ago; and we continue to hear it and marvel at it today.\r\n\r\nKeats is a master of imagery, and sensuous images that help us see the poem\u2019s beautiful settings and hear its beautiful music appear in every stanza. The latter half of stanza 4 and all of stanza 5, wherein Keats describes the imaginary world to which the nightingale\u2019s song transported him, are especially effective. As we read the poem aloud, we can feel the tender night, see the bright moon, smell and hear, almost taste, the lush gardens, even though they are lit only by the moon. Alliteration and assonance support and feed the imagery.\r\n

Context<\/h2>\r\nIn the spring of 1819, Keats was sharing a house with his friend Charles Brown.\u00a0 The house was Wentworth Place, in Hampstead, a suburb of London. The house is now Keats House, a museum dedicated to John Keats. According to Brown, Keats was captivated by the song of a nightingale, which had nested in a plum tree\u2014still there\u2014in the garden. One morning, he sat under the plum tree for two or three hours and wrote the poem.\r\n

Related Activities and Questions for Study and Discussion<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n

Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Hear a nightingale sing [YouTube]<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Hear Benedict Cumberbatch read \u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Do you get more out of the poem after you hear the bird sing and professional actor read? Explain your answer.<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Watch the trailer for Bright Star, <\/em>a film about Keats's relationship with Fanny<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    Text Attributions<\/h3>\r\n