John Keats's Ode To A Nightengale

Though he was arguably the romantic era's most talented poet, John Keats's short life was plagued with illness, separation, and sorrow. Naturally, his poems reflect his inner distress with their sober, forlorn tones. The corresponding mood then, is unsurprisingly melancholy and dim. Yet, each poem, in fact each stanza, simultaneously expresses the opposite: bliss, wonder, enchantment, and rapture. It is the juxtaposition of these two antipodal states of mind that make Keats's work so compelling.

In "Ode to a Nightingale," Keats tortures the reader with his distraught, morose morbidity, then uplifts him with an almost ecstatic fervor: "My heart aches and drowsy numbness pains" becomes "being happy in thine own happiness." Notice the onomatopoeia in the first line. The assonance in the last three words gives one the sense of sleep. The line "murmurous haunt of flies and summer eves" (line 50) has a similar effect. In line 4, he alludes to sinking in the river Lethe, hearkening back to the classical Greek river of sleep, forgetfulness, and death. Hence, while the sound of the words or phrases affect the tone, and consequently the overall mood or impression Keats seeks to engender, the literary allusions to Lethe and later Bacchus paint a broader picture, one that stretches the forlorn spirit back through time as if to give credence and importance to his seemingly personal condition. Indeed, Keats had been ill, and would soon die; his brother had recently perished. His love life proved unfruitful. However, the poem's enduring and endearing quality is an affirmation of its potency; the urge to "fade far away, dissolve, and then forget" runs like a ripple across our canvass, tainting drug addicts, prostitutes, lonely lovers, forsaken sons, confused adolescents, misunderstood poets, declining elders, and any whose dreams remain unfulfilled, whose potential has been stunted or even uprooted.

Of course imagery plays an integral role in the illustration of Keats's mood and meaning. The poem is brimming with phrases which manifest a sometimes sober, sometimes almost drunken state: "as though of hemlock I

...