Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats - Notes

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats - Notes

PARAPHRASE:

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:

The poet has a painful experience on hearing a nightingale singing. He feels that his sense is getting disturbed by sleepiness and a feeling of no sensation. It was as though he had entered forgetfulness by having consumed some drink made from hemlock, a poisonous plant and have become poisoned or had relished opium to the full of a quantity and yet to experience total effect. Forgetfulness is symbolised by a mythological river, Lethe, which flows through Hades, a place where people go after their death, according to Greek mythology.

’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.

The poet is addressing the bird saying that the feeling which he experiences has not arisen due to envy on seeing the bird's carefree situation in its life but because he is happy for the bird and has found himself involved in the same. He then explains about how he came to know its happiness. The bird is singing beautifully with utmost ease in the beautiful season of summer and in a perfect place for melody where there is full of greenery with the presence of beech trees providing pleasant shelter from direct sunlight. He calls it as 'Dryad of the trees' where 'Dryad' is a tree nymph, a mythological spirit in the form of a beautiful young woman which he uses to admire its beauty. The bird possesses tender wings.

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:

The poet yearns to escape with the bird into its world, the forest, leaving his world of miseries by way of consuming a special type of wine. The poet yearns to have a drink of wine which is of high quality from a particular year. Year denotes the time when it was buried under the earth which should be long way behind because the older the wine the superior it is, in quality. That wine should arouse a brief experience, probably imaginary, of enjoying the beauty of the pleasant country-side scenery comprising of flowers and greenery, amusement of a dance to a great song that of Provinces and laughter out of joy in a badly-awaited summer day. The poet then presents admiration for the beaker which contains the wine attributing to it the quality of water from Hippocrene, a spring from Mount Helicon, drinking the water of which is believed to arouse poetic inspiration. That wine also has, as the poet imagines, the pleasantness of summer in the Southern part of the country. He then describes the surface of wine at the brim so as to have breaking bubbles seeming to wink and the mouth of the beaker coloured purple due to it.

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.

The poet wants to disappear from his world, get into the bird's world and completely forget those worries which the bird never knew in its world safe between the trees. He lists those worries thereafter as tiredness, fever, uneasiness, groaning, old people attacked by paralysis, even young people affected by something by which they become thin like a ghost and finally die, sorrowful thoughts, eyes filled with tears due to hopelessness, beauty fades unable to keep up its prestige and love fails by not missing the other more than the very next day.

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:

The poet wants to go very far, so far that he may not be able to reach even had he rode on the chariot of a Roman God, Bacchus powered by his leopards; but with Poetry with the aid of its imaginary invisible wings. He wants to do so from his heart eventhough his intellect puzzles him greatly and holds him back with the consciousness of the deceiving nature of imagination.

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.

He is getting courage to desire so because he is able to have a glimpse of fulfilment of some of those in the same place with the bird without having left his world according to his desire. Some of the glimpses which he obtained are the night being gentle and kind, moon seeming as majestic as a Roman Goddess, Diana seated on her throne and the stars surrounding the moon as the Goddess' fairies. These are all of the sky, visible due to the presence of light. But the place where the poet and the nightingale are, is dark. There is no light coming from the sky but the breeze flows from the heaven and passes through the dark green forest and pathways amidst which are covered with moss again and again.

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.

Since it is dark there the poet is unable to see things. He can feel the flowers on the ground touching his feet and can smell some sweet smelling flower or fruit from above hanging from the branches. He is able to guess in the sweet-scented darkness, each sweet smelling thing which is provided by the seasonal month. They are grass, dense group of bushes, wild fruit tree, white hawthorn (thorny shrub or tree with small red berries), pastoral eglantine (country side rose), violets (a small plant with purple or blue flowers) which are covered by leaves of climbers on the ground, the rose of high quality, the first product in the ripe time of the cheerful season falling in the month of May, smelling of musk and moisture laden, the moisture of which is imagined by the poet as dew drops of wine, and the flies which make continuous noise and visit frequently on summer evenings.

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;

In the darkness, the poet

NOTE: THIS IS STILL INCOMPLETE.