In John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" we find the reader suffering from insomnia and listening to the a nightingale sing her song. What I like about this poem, is that its an "ode" which means it is a poem of admiration. Odes in my opinion are the types of poems that are easiest to express love. Also with this poem Keats also expresses a thought process of retrospect as well as one of a man being able to understand his own mortality.
The speaker states in line 26 "Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies." To me this line is significant to the speaker listening to the nightingale, because of the immortality of the song inwhich the nightingale sings. The speaker understands in the entire third stanza, that everthing fades with time, such as beauty, and youth. It is amazing to me that the speakers mind at this late hour of the night turns to his mortality due in part of a song. The nightingale song, that has been heard by emperors and clowns.
In my reading of this poem, I found that it was not just a ode (love poem) to the nightingale, but a thank you to the nightingale and it's song. The speaker is thanking the nightingale for finding him worthy to hear his timeless song. Again a song that has been heard by more important and signifcant ears than his. In the last line of the poem the speaker says, "Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep?" He is wondering if it all was a dream or just luck on his part. I believe that it was fate that destined him to be chosen to hear the nightingale sing.
Tony,
ReplyDeleteGood focus on this ode, and some good insights and observations on Keats's poem. Your post is strongest when you base your comments on textual evidence, specifically the passages you quote. I think you tend to reduce their effectiveness somewhat, though, by only quoting brief phrases or single lines. While in modern free verse poetry the unit of meaning is usually the line, in 19th century verse it is the verse sentence: that is, the complete sentence which expresses the idea over several lines, usually. When quoting from this period it is better to present the entire verse sentence, because the context and flow of ideas is much clearer there than in a single line of that sentence.