Nightingale Notes Themes With "Ode to a Nightingale," Keats's speaker begins his fullest and deepest exploration of the

themes of creative expression and the mortality of human life. In this ode, the transience of life and the tragedy of old age ("where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies") is set against the eternal renewal of the nightingale's fluid music ("Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!"). Hearing the song of the nightingale, the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. His first thought is to reach the bird's state through alcohol-in the second stanza, he longs for a "draught of vintage" to transport him out of himself. But after his meditation in the third stanza on the transience of life, he rejects the idea of being "charioted by Bacchus and his pards" (Bacchus was the Roman god of wine and was supposed to have been carried by a chariot pulled by leopards) and chooses instead to embrace "the viewless wings of Poesy." Man and Nature Mortality Happiness Transcience of life Immortality of nature/the ideal IMMORTALITY OF THE NIGHTINGALE It is important, when answering this question, to consider how the nightingale functions symbolically in this excellent Romantic poem, rather than just literally. Of course, the speaker is not actually saying that the nightingale cannot die, rather it is saying that what the nightingale represents--what it stands for--is eternal. There is a clear contrast in the poem made between men and the nightingale. Men are shown to live in a world characterised by pain and suffering, the "hungry generations" that "tread" us down. However, the nightingale is shown in this poem to live in an alternative realm a realm that is free from suffering and pain. This is because in this poem the nightingale functions as a symbol of enduring art and the eternal beauty of nature. As such, the nightingale, its song and what it represents is immortal compared to the brief lives of men. REPRESENTATIVE OF KEATS POETRY I suppose one of the ways we can answer this question is by looking at the content and the themes of this excellent ode. There are clear thematic links between this ode and other odes by Keats, such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn," with their focus on beauty and the way that beauty is linked to human suffering. In both poems, we have two symbols that are used to represent beauty, in the nightingale and the Grecian urn. Likewise, both poems focus on artistic talent and the way that creating beauty can help free us from our earthly sufferings. However, simultaneously, we have the bitter-sweet recognition that the appreciation of beauty and its eternal nature only serves to remind us of how transitory we are as humans, and how we must accept our own mortality and the way that suffering and death will claim us sooner or later.

COMPARISON WITH GRECIAN URN Heard melodies are sweet/ But those unheards are sweeter It is an interesting question, which arises from intertextual practice within a single author's canon. The quoted lines in "Ode on a Grecian Ode" refers to the melodies sung by the person whose picture in inscribed on the surface of the urn. His melodies belong to another world of art and are thus inaudible. It is the unheard quality that enigmatizes the melody all the more and makes it sweeter than the heard ones. In the Nightingale Ode, the inspiring song of the Nightingale may well seem to be a 'heard melody' going beyond the charms of that which is unheard. But things are more complex than that. The bird throughout the poem is under a veil. It can never be seen. It is an obscure object of desire, which never exists beyond its melody. This disembodied aspect of the Nightingale in Keats's poem lends it with the enigmatic aura of the 'unheard' despite being 'heard' all along. The journey is thus jettisoned with the stress on the word 'forlorn' and there is a return to the ordinary world of human suffering in temporal flux. Think of these two poems as representing opposite ideas - life and death; life, because the nightingale is a living creature, and death because the scene depicted on the Grecian urn no longer exists. Although life is not always like listening to the beautiful sounds of the nightingale's song and often is full of "the weariness, the fever, and the fret" brought on by fears of death, the urn's characters can no longer experience life's pain or joy because they are dead. With the urn, the poet sees that beauty can be eternal but life is not. Ode to a nightingale' by John Keats deals with the theme of escape more in the present - 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' on the other hand deals with escapism in the past. In the first poem, John Keats is weary of his day and imagines the cooling balm of a life following the nightingale into the deepest recesses of the spring green woodland. In the second poem, it is the past where the two young sweethearts are in a place of escape. Trapped in time while we move on, their leaves do not wither and their love does not die. We, however, and Keats, do move on and time keeps turning - the image of the young people lives forever but the real people they were based on did die, as we all do eventually. The Nightingale represents the comfort and solace for Keats in the present. The bird may symbolize more than one thing. Possible meanings include

pure or unmixed joy, the artist, with the bird's voice being self expression or the song being poetry, the music (beauties) of nature The ideal.

Keats moves from his awareness of his own mortality in the preceding stanza to the perception of the bird's immortality. On a literal level, his perception is wrong; this bird will die. Some readers, including very perceptive ones, see his characterization of the bird as immortal as a flaw. Before you make this judgment, consider alternate interpretations. Interpreting the line literally may be a misreading, because the bird has clearly become a symbol for the poet.

Is he saying that the bird he is now hearing is immortal? Or is he saying something else, like "the bird is a symbol of the continuity of nature" or like "the bird represents the continuing presence of joy in life"? In such a reading, the poet contrasts the bird's immortality (and continuing joyful song) with the condition of human beings, "hungry generations." Does the bird symbolize ideal beauty, which is immortal? Or is the bird the visionary or imaginative realm which inspires poets? Or does the bird's song symbolize poetry and has the passion of the song/poem carried the listening poet away? Has the actual bird been transformed into a myth? Does this one bird represent the species, which by continuing generation after generation does achieve a kind of immortality as a species? Is the nightingale not born for death in the sense that, unlike us human beings, it doesn't know it's going to die? An implication of this reading is that the bird is integrated into nature or is part of natural processes whereas we are separated from nature. The resulting ability to observe nature gives us the ability to appreciate the beauty of nature, however transitory it-and we--may be.

SENSUAL DEPICTION OF NATURE Keats, as a Romantic poet, is undoubtedly famous for his description of natural beauty. One of the ways in which the descriptions of nature operate in this poem is the way that Keats creates a division between the earth where man dwells, which is characterised by suffering and pain, and the realm of the nightingale in the sky, which is described as being above the realm of humans in every way. Note how the moon is imaginatively described as an enthroned queen surrounded by fairy stars in all of their beauty. The earth, on the other hand, is described as gloomy, twisting, mossy and dark, a place where there is "no light." The "ecstasy" of the sound of the nightingale's song, therefore, is strongly compared to the sufferings of mortal existence. Even though the description of earth is much darker, it is still arguably sensuous in the way it creates in our minds labyrinthine paths of "mossy ways" enshrouded by trees and darkness.