1 British Literature and Expository Writing Honors

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats I. My heart is hurting, and tiring lack of feeling hurts me. I feel that I have taken a poison to my senses, Or that I took uninteresting opium into my lungs. Its been only one minute and the River of Forgetfulness has disappeared: It was not from jealousy from all the happiness, But its being too happy with your happiness That you, a light-winged bird in the trees, In some musical plan In the trees of green, and countless shadows, Sing of summer beautifully without trying.

II. Oh, I would like a drink of fine wine! A wine that has been Chilled for years in the deep innards of the earth, That tastes like vegetation from the goddess of flowers and the countryside, I would dance in the songs of love, and with the sunburnt entertainment! Oh for a taste of the South, Full of the proper, and grand encouragement from the fountain of Hippocrene, With drops of bubbles at the edge, And with a purple-stained rim; I would drink from this fountain and leave earth hidden, And with you I will fade away into the forest quietly:

III. I would fade far away and forget What the leaves and forest have never known, The tiredness, the passion, and the worry

2 Here, where men rest and listen to each other in pain; Where helplessness shakes a few sad old men, Where the young become weak, and ghost-thin, and eventually die; Where the only thing we can think is sorrow And gloomy misery, Even where Beauty cant keep its radiant glow, Or new love can sulk at the people in the future.

IV. Stay away! Because I will come to you, Not by chariot with Bacchus, the god of wine, and his leopards, But on the unseen wings of poetry, Though our boring brain can be confusing and delays in progress: Already with you! Loving is in the night, And perhaps the moon is on her throne, With all her star fairies around her; But here where I am there is no light, Save me from the heaven where the wind blows Through green plants glooms and winding mossy paths.

V. I dont see the flowers on the ground, Nor the sweet smells that hangs on the branches, But in the sweet-smelling darkness, guess which sweet The seasonable month gives The grass, the wood, and the trees of fruit; White rose trees, and the rural honeysuckle; The fast vanishing violets were covered up with leaves; And mid-Mays oldest flower, The musk-rose, was full of wet wine, The soft-sounding trouble of flies on summer eves.

VI. In the dark, I listen; and many times I have been in love with easy Death And I called him smooth names as a pondering rhyme, To take my calm breathe into the air; Now it seems that you must be rich to die, To stop the night with no pain, While you pour art out of your soul overseas In such a happiness! Still would you sing, and I have ears that are selfish To the high music honoring the dead that became a territory.

VII. You were not born for death, undying bird! No wanting generations tramp you down; The voice I heard yesterday night was heard In the old days of emperors and clowns: Maybe the exact song that found a way Through the miserable heart of Ruth when she was homesick, She stayed in tears among the unknown corn; The same sometimes has Charmed magic windows, opening on the suds Of dangerous seas, in a hopeless fairyland.

VIII. Saddened! That word is like an awakening To take me back from you and myself! Goodbye! The rich cannot deceive that well As they are said to be able to do, deceiving fairy. Goodbye! Goodbye! The mournful song of praise goes away

4 Beyond the meadows and over the rivers, Up the hills; and now its gone forever under the ground In the next valley over: Was it a hallucination, or a dream I woke up from? Music has escaped: -- Do I wake up from this dream or do I go back to sleep?