A critical appreciation of Keats’ “Ode to aNightingale John Keats, a poet of the romantic era, composed

this poem in the spring of 1819.Being a poet of the Romantic era, he was a Nature lover, but instead of
looking atNature as a guide or teacher, he was in pursuit of beauty within Nature. The romanticpoets
emphasized on emotions, they believed in the power of imagination andexperimented with new ideas
and concepts. Keats is generally considered the mosttragic of the Romantic poets as he was faced by a
series of sad experiences in his life.

The poem was written a few months after the death of the poet’s brother. Ode to a Nightingale is one of
the five “spring ode’s ” composed by Keats. He emphasized on sensuousness, that is, his works appealed
to all the five senses of sight,sound, touch, smell and taste. An ode is a lyric, which is lofty in style and is
usuallyaddressed formally to its subject.Greek and Roman mythology were inspiration for his poetry.
Medieval elements andromances and Arthurian legends were incorporated into his poetry. He had the
gift of avivid and picturesque imagination that fills his poetry with a brilliant sense of imagery.The poet
begins by explaining the nature and cause of the sadness he is experiencing.This sadness is converted
into physical ache and “drowsy numbness”.

He feels as if he might have consumed some sort of drug to ease his pain, this resembles the qualities
ofthe Lethe, a river in Hades, the underworld, where the dead drank and went into totaloblivion and lost
all senses. The feeling is a result of the deep awareness of happinessof the nightingale he hears singing;
his resulting pleasure is so intense it has becomepainful. The nightingale is referred to the “light winged
Drayad of the trees”, implying th at it is atree nymph. Dwelling amidst the darkness of the trees in a
forest, it singsunconstrained.

The poem shows the contrast between the poet, who is earthbound andthe nightingale, which is free
and possesses seemingly ethereal qualities. The poetus es alliterative sounds produced by the repetition
of ‘d’ (‘drowsy’, ‘dull’, ‘drunk’ and‘drains’), ‘m’ (‘my, ‘dumb’, ‘hemlock and ‘minute’) and ‘p’ (‘pains’,
’emptied’, ‘opiate’,‘past’). In the second stanza, Keats longs for some intoxicant, “a draught of vintage”,
which will help him to achieve a union with the nightingale,

allowing him to forget his suffering anddespair which will take him out of the mutability of all
experiences in the mortal world.To him, a glass of this wine will transport him into that joyous world of
the nightingale.He says that this red wine, will inspire him more than the colourless waters of
theHippocrene, which is the fountain of the muses, a source of poetic inspiration. He desires to be
completely absorbed in the bird’s song. He wants to “fade away” with the