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.

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Ajit Kaliya

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