ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

Did you know : Charles Brown gave an account about the origin of the poem-

"In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continued joy in her song, and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived that he had some scraps of paper in his hands and these he was quietly trusting behind the books"

This poem was published in July,1819 in a quarterly Annals of the Fine Arts. 

 

1.GIVE CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF THE POEM 'ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE' : 

'The Ode to a Nightingale' is a remarkable achievement of Keats's genius. The massive beauty of the poem lies in its rich and concentrated diction and skill of presentation. 

It reveals all the dominant features of Keats's poetry. Each phrase, used in the ode, is filled with tense, emotion, rich suggestion and sensuousness. The Ode to a Nightingale begins with the record of a sensation which is purely physical. The description of the wine is an example of sensuousness. 

" O for a beaker full of the warmth South

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene" 

He imagines the song of the nightingale as something permanent and imperishable in the sense that this song of the bird has ever been loved and admired in the future. 

The poem vibrates with personal anguish-

"Where the youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies" 

The poet reveals that his own brother Tom died five months before the poem was written. 

Beauty of lustrous eyes is Fanny Brawne and the new love cannot "pine at them beyond tomorrow" refers to his own love that has become an agony. 

The exquisite metrical structure of the poem has greatly contributed to its beauty. There are ten iambic lines in each stanza. 

The poem bears out his love for HELLENISM. His instances to Bacchus and his pards and the blushful Hippocrene testify to this. 

Each stanza in “The Ode to a Nightingale” is rhymed ABABCDECDE.

2. " Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to die, deceiving elf!" 

Comment critically on the lines and show how they bring out the complexity of the poet's attitude in the Nightingale Ode. 

These lines are taken from Keats's evergreen ode "Ode to a Nightingale". These lines express that the poet is not an escapist and also reveal Keats's idea that our imperfect nature is not farmed to enjoy eternal joy and beauty for long.These lines show the complexity of Keats's attitudes in the Nightingale Ode. His journey across the dark valley of his life in quest of joy and beauty is defined here. The spiritual disturbance is reflected in his restlessness. 

Here the poet's mood is fully changed. The golden tower built by imagination here collapsed. The continual shifting of moods, the uncertainty and fickleness makes the poet's attitude complex.