John Keats – Ode to a Nightingale Criticism

Keats is in love with a nightingale. He is at a loss of how to feel happy for witnessing the poultrys high requiem, or sad for not be part of its gentlemans gentleman. In the first stanza the poet is having clear symptoms of an extreme sadness. His tenderness aches and a drowsy numbness pains his sense. This heavy mood is paradoxically denounced in the same stanza. Its being too happy in the nightingales happiness thats causing the malaise. The stanza comes to an end in a joyful mood as opposed the heavy start of the poem. He imagines the birds home as some melodious plot of land of beechen green. done this synaesthesia he creates a vivid run into of one of his classic bowers. The arcminute stanza opens with a plea for a drouth of vintage through which he nates fulfill his plea to take place away. This stanza evokes a lot of appeal to the sense of taste, tasting of phytology and county green. The theme of nature together with a joyful line is also evident. Dance, and prove ncal song, and sunburnt mirth. From the comfort of the dreamingy second stanza, the third plunges the endorser into the sad reality and banality of life. The weariness, the fever, and the fret atomic number 18 a reality that the nightingale doesnt k instantly.Here youth grows pale and peach tree cannot keep her lustrous eyes. This sombre stanza induces a feeling of a disappointing reality. Its much better to belong to a dream than to this painful truth. This stanza is also a typical example of Keatss irresistible impulse with illness and death. He decides to fly to the nightingales realm. However he wont do this through substance he pondered rough in the first two stanzas, but through the viewless travel of poesy. This is a eulogy to poetry and its ability to take the reader to the spiritual realm of imagination.He joins the nightingale where the trees let no light in except for when the wind moves their branches. The last three lines stress evil and the downhearted colours of mundane existence. In the fifth stanza he cannot see what squeezable incense hangs upon the boughs. This synaesthesia leads the reader to touch the scent. He is enveloped in embalmed darkness where balm is a sweet smelling fragrance but he can still imagine all that there in its midst. Through the heavenly eyes of imagination he can see the uninfected hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine.He can see fast fading violets and the musk-rose that is full of dewy wine to make sure we know that this world being describe is the nightingales not the poets. He can also hear the murmurous haunt of flies on summertime eves. After experiencing the extreme joy of the nightingales song he is finding it hard to go back to the harsh reality. He is vie with the tempting idea of an easeful Death. It would be a happy death, now more than ever it seems rich to die, in such fanaticism. But then his thought evolves further and understands that the nightingale would go on singing, and being death h e would miss his high requiem.The shift key from reality to fantasy keeps going on. The poet is back in the nightingales realm. It seems that the switch occurred also in his mood. From the rather dark mood of the 6th stanza, the seventh stanza introduces us to a rather jubilant Keats. Hes full of praise for the immortal bird whose voice transcends from ancient geezerhood. It was comprehend by emperor and clown, which perhaps implies that its song is for everyone. It was heard by Ruth, a biblical figure who has a sad heart to alleviate her pains. Its song charmd magic ceasments of queen which are forlorn and the seas which are perilous.These words hint at the pain described in the first stanza, a pain the poet is seek to escape. This idea of pain introduces us to the next stanza. The same word forlorn wakes him up reminds him of reality. Fancy or imagination is seen as a cheater. He awakes from this delusion understanding where he really belongs. This brings him to question if i t all was a mental imagery, or a waking dream? This is a reference to the short and brief nature of imagination, perhaps the poem itself. It was all a transitory euphoria, fled is that music do I wake or sleep, it seems that the vision was too good to be true.