Ode to Nightingale

'Nightingale is a famous ode of young English romantic poet John Keats. Ode is a poem that speaks to a person or thing or celebrates a special event.

Keats sees and listens one Nightingale singing when he was sad. He was in state of numbness and drowsiness. Because he had taken drug few moments ago. He tells he is not in this state because Nightingale was happy and he was not but it was joyfull sadness by sharing happiness.

Keats wants that draught of wine which can take him out of himself and allow him to join with that Nightingale. He thinks that the wine will put him in a state in which he will forget all pains of life. This reflects how Keats would be in melancholy. Further he says about pains of life. Young dies, old suffers. Life brings only sorrows and sufferings.

Now Keats says wine is not needed to escape from reality. His imagination can also do it. He realises this and lifted up above the trees and can see the moon and stars but in real there was only little light. He also says that though he can not see flowers in the glade but can guess them. white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, all.

In darkness he listens to the Nightingale and feels that it would be best moment to die. To cease upon the midnight with no pains while Nightingale will continue to sing joyfully. He confesses he has been in love with easeful death. The Nightingale is free from human fate. He says Nightingale is immortal. Not by literal meaning but it means music of nature is immortal and so it was heard by ancient emperors and peasants.

At last Keats comes back in real world. He could not escape from reality even with the help of imagination. It was only temporary.

Now the singing of the bird grows fainter and dies away. Keats confused that if the whole experience was a vision or a daydream? He was even not sure whether he was asleep or awake?

Here poem ends. This poem reflects Keats ideas of death, power of imagination and reality of life.

Comments

To the Indians who died in South Africa - T.S. Eliot

A man's destination is his own village, His own fire, and his wife's cooking; To sit in front of his own door at sunset And see his grandson, and his neighbour's grandson Playing in the dust together. Scarred but secure, he has many memories Which return at the hour of conversation, (The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate) Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places, Foreign to each other. A man's destination is not his destiny, Every country is home to one man And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely At one with his destiny, that soil is his. Let his village remember. This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands, And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard. Let those who go home tell the same story of you: Of action with a common purpose, action None the less fruitful if neither you nor we Know, unt...

The Old Woman - Joseph Campbell

'The Old Woman' is simple and short poem by Joseph Campbell where he compares old woman with different things and describes her. The poem has three stanzas. .In the first stanza , the poet compares the old lady with the white candle. White colour is symbol of peace and candle is symbol of light. The old woman is like white candle. She is in peace and she gives other people light by his experiences. She is able to show right path who need that. In the second stanza, the poet compares the old lady with the spent radiance of the winter's sun. It refers old woman's long life. But now she is old like winter's sun, but she has gathered a wide experience of life. Poet writes, "A woman with her travail done" In last stanza, the poet compares the old woman with the water under the ruined mill. The water is still under the ruined mill and by comparing this poet writes about the old lady that her all sons has gone, they do not live with her. But she has all the...

Joy and woe woven are fine - William Blake

In this short poem William Blake wants to give message that joy and grief, both are part of life and both are good. He says joy and woe are woven fine. Woven means things which are attached to each other. Both happiness and grief are fine. They are cloths of our soul. In every grief, there are also joy we need to find it. We are not here for only happiness or for only pain. But we are made for both. And when we know that joy and woe both are part of our life, we can live happily in grief also. So, in this poem poet wants to tell that accept both joy and pain. Do not become unhappy when sad moments come, there are always happy moments also. Know that both are part of everyone's life and live happily. That is all poet wants to say in the poem.

Ajit Kaliya

Search This Blog