Ode: Ode to a Nightingale

"Ode to a Nightingale" Original Manuscript

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

(I)

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

  But being too happy in thine happiness,—

    That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

          In some melodious plot

  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

    Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

(II)

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

  Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

          And purple-stained mouth;

  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

    And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

(III)

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

  What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

          And leaden-eyed despairs,

  Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

(IV)

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

          But here there is no light,

  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

(V)

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

  Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

    Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

          And mid-May's eldest child,

  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

(VI)

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

          In such an ecstasy!

  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

    To thy high requiem become a sod.

(VII)

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

  No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

  In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

          The same that oft-times hath

  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

(VIII)

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

  To toil me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

  As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

          In the next valley-glades:

  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

    Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Summary of "Ode to a Nightingale"

In the first stanza, the speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; he is “too happy” that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.

In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, “a draught of vintage,” that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him “leave the world unseen” and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale. 

In the third stanza, he explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. Youth “grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,” and “beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him “viewless wings.” He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches. 

In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them “in embalmed darkness”: white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, “the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” 

In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. If he were to die, the nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would “have ears in vain” and be no longer able to hear.

In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal, that it was not “born for death.” He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out over “the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” 

In the eighth stanza, the word forlorn tolls like a bell to restore the speaker from his preoccupation with the nightingale and back into himself. As the nightingale flies farther away from him, he laments that his imagination has failed him and says that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale’s music was “a vision, or a waking dream.” Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether he himself is awake or asleep.