"Ode To A Nightingale"

Just as Wordsworth found rapture and "visionary gleam" in nature so Keats found
something similar in the contemplation of the song of the nightingale. But unlike
Wordsworth, Keats achieves a spiritual or visionary state through the act of
creation, through the act of writing poetry. In this way, he is closer to Coleridge in
"Kubla Khan."

He begins by explaining that through the contemplation of the nightingale's song, he

has gone beyond the limitations of the conscious mind to a new state that makes him
feel sleepy, "drowsy" almost to the point of death, as if he has poisoned himself ("as
though of hemlock I had drunk") or taken drugs ("Or emptied some dull opiate to
the drains"). In this deadened, near-death state, he achieves a degree of
identification with the bird and is almost too happy in the bird's happiness ("being
too happy in thine happiness"). The bird who "Singest of summer in full-throated
ease" is the natural artist, a model of what Keats would like to be: a poet who writes
perfect poet as easily as the bird sings.

In the second stanza he calls for wine to give him a greater identification with the
bird: "O, for a fraught of vintage! . . . O for a beaker full of the warm South . . .
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,/ And purple-stained mouth." In his
inebriation, with his senses deadened ("a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense) he
wants to become one with the bird 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." What the bird has never known is old age and
death: "Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,/ Where youth grows pale
and spectre-thin, and dies;" Keats is referring specifically to his brother Tom's
recent death from Tuberculosis, a disease from which Keats will die in just two
years, 1821.

In stanza four, he achieves such identification with the bird that he tells the bird
"Away! away! for I will fly to thee"; but he will not do so through alcohol or drugs;
he will do so through his poetry ("Not charioted by Bacchus" the god of wine "But
on the viewless wings of Poesy"). He acknowledges that he is not naturally gifted as
is the bird: "Though the dull brain perplexes and retards."

Notice the explanation marks in this stanza; they indicate along with the words that
this is the climax of the poem, the point in the mental journey captured in this poem
where he feels a sublime identification with the bird perhaps through the writing of
this very poem: "Already with thee!" His rapture is expressed in the line "tender is
night."

But he cannot sustain this rapturous state, and the remainder of the poem is a sad
return to his ordinary consciousness. Such a return brings depression.
Stanza six: At first he thinks it would be best to die while he is so happy. In the dark
he listens to the bird's song ("Darkling I listen; and, for many a time/ I have been
half in love with easeful Death,/ Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, . . .
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 ecstasy!" But he realizes
that if he is dead he would no longer be able to appreciate beauty such as the bird's
song: "Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain --/ To thy high requiem" he
would be "a sod."

In stanza seven he contemplates the bird's past when he sang for an emperor or for
Ruth of the Bible. In the past the bird has "Charm'd magic casements, opening on
the foam/ Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

In the eighth stanza he comes down completely from his "high" and bids good bye
to the bird: "Adieu! " By this time he cannot even be sure that he has experienced
what he describes in the poem and asks "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled
is that music: -- Do I wake or sleep?"