Ode+to+a+Nightingale

Ode to a nightingale What are some suggested ideas? (2) - Reality vs Dream/imaginations - Allusions to roman gods - Immortality - Life vs Death - Real vs ideal - Passage of time - Immortality of the simple beauty of the nightingale’s song. Representing the simple beauty of nature.

What are some Significant Images? (1) - Nature/Green (Dryad, Flora &Flowers (rose, violet…), valley-glades, fruit tree wild) - Drinking and excess (Bacchus, beaded bubbles & purple stained mouth, ecstasy) - Dreams/altered state of mind (Wine, hemlock, opiate, vision or a waking dream) - Darkness, Shadows, Death - Generations/Hierarchy (Queen-Moon, Where palsy…Where youth…, Emperor and clown) - Incense, olfactory imagery - Magic (Dryad, Elf, Greek gods) - Music, auditory What is happening in this poem? (4) - Stanza 1: The speaker is experiencing melancholy, feeling numb, but feels of pain of numbness. Talks about the nightingale, and its ease with happiness, and just sings in “full-throated ease” - Stanza 2: Speaker wants to escape reality and join the world of the nightingale, “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen and with thee fade away into the forest dim” (18) - Stanza 3: Speaker is using his imagination to describe the world of the nightingales. To leave is to leave behind “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” - Stanza 4: Speaker talks about Bacchus, the Roman god of wine Stanza 5:Love of nature. Although he cannot see, he can feel. Talks about wine again. “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet” “the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. What might be some purposes of the poem? - Keats compares the eternal nature of the nightingales song with the limited nature of human mortality. This is probably a result of the death of his brother.