Ode to a Nightingale:
In the first stanza of this poem we find out that the speaker is sad for some reason. He says “Tis not through envy of thy happy lot/ but being too happy in thine happiness” lines 5-6. I think what he is trying to say here is that he is not envious of the bird being happy, however he is almost mad because the bird is so happy with himself. I suppose when a person is depressed, or becomes numb to emotions that they may have a tendency to be jealous of others, even in this case a bird. I do not necessarily know that the speakers has taken any sedatives or drugs, however he mentions that he feels as if he had. “My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk/ Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains” 3-4. When a person is inebriated they do not have as many cares in the world. Things become less important to them, and since in most cases these types of drugs are what they call “downers” it can bring people down to a depressed state of mind. I believe this is how the speaker is trying to describe his mood right now.
In the second stanza the speaker asks for wine. There again I am not sure the speaker is trying to get drunk, however is trying to get into a state of mind where he can relate to the bird. He says things such as “Tasting of Flora and the country green,/ Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mith” 13-14. I believe what he is trying to say throughout this whole stanza is that he wants to be able to relate to the bird and feel what the bird feels. By drinking the wine he is enabling himself to feel these feelings. We are still unsure why the speaker is in pain at this point in the poem. However, he wants to relate to the bird. His last line in this stanza says “And with thee fade away into the forest dim” 20. For some unknown reason I believe he is trying to escape reality. He wants this bird, whom he sees as happy to be his companion.
It seems that in the third stanza the speaker snaps back into reality for a bit. He seems a bit bitter at the bird because he is telling the bird that it knows nothing about the reality of growing old and losing beauty. He says “What thou among the leaves hast never known/The weariness, the fever, and the fret” 22-23. He is telling the bird you do not know anything about worrying you just live up among the leaves and live your beautiful happy life.
In the fourth stanza the speaker gets excited and says “Away! Away! For I will fly to thee, /Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards” 31-32. He is saying I will fly away with you bird, and I will not drink the wine. He decides he is going to rely on poetry instead of the wine or other drugs. We still are unsure of why he has such heartaches, but obviously they are painful and hard for him to forget.
In the fifth stanza the speaker is in the dark. He is flying with the nightingale, however he must depend on other senses to get him through the flight because he cannot see. Even though he cannot see his relies on this other senses and describes beautiful things to us. He says, “Wherewith the seasonable month endows/ The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild” 45-46. Possibly since he is letting the nightingale lead the flight for once in his life is he able to focus on the positives in life instead of the negatives.
In stanza six all of a sudden the speaker goes back to his depressed state and starts talking about how he wants to die. He says, “I have been half in love with easeful Death/ Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme” lines 52-53. This is one of the options the speaker finds fit in order to help heal his heartache. Before he was talking about drinking wine, but now he is referring to killing himself as an option.
The speaker says that the bird is immortal. I believe what the speaker is trying to say is that the bird as a species is immortal. He refers to “In ancient says be emperor and clown…that found a path” 64-65. I believe what he is trying to say is that your species has been there for ancient emperors just as it was there for the speaker. Maybe he sees this as the birds purpose in life, and he feels that he does not have a purpose.
In the last stanza of the poem the bird leaves the speaker. The bird is going on to sing a song to someone else. At this point the speaker is not sure if he were dreaming or not. He says in the last line “Do I wake or sleep?” 80. At this point you wonder if the bird ever existed or if he was using the idea of the bird to express how he feels.
About Me
- Jenny
- I am a Senior at Mercer and will be finished with school after this summer! I am going to work for Cedarstream, and I will be doing Marketing and Sales for them.
2 comments:
I also chose to write about this particular poem by Keats. I found some of the things you had to say interesting, as they were different than the way I interpreted some things on my own. That's part of the reason I like poetry--it's extremely subjective!
In the first stanza, you shared that you think the speaker "is almost mad because the bird is so happy with himself." If I understand you correctly, you mean to say that the speaker is angry because the bird is happy that he’s a bird essentially. You also suggest that maybe the speaker in the poem is jealous of the bird’s joy. I think those are great ideas, but I never really thought of it that way. It’s a definite possibility. I read those lines and thought that maybe the speaker was almost annoyed at the joy that the bird brought him. For example, when I am in a bad mood, people who are smiling and laughing and enjoying life seem VERY annoying. It's like if I'm unhappy, I want everyone to be unhappy (not a great trait of mine I might add, but human nonetheless). When I am feeling down and one of these happy spirits makes me smile or laugh with them, my pride keeps me from wanting to participate and forget why I am upset. At those times I don’t really so much feel jealous of those happy people, it’s more like I resent them for not letting me sulk. So, perhaps the speaker is feeling a combination of what we interpreted. Anyway, I like you're spin on the same idea.
Jenny,
There are some definite positive elements of this post, such as your focus on a single poem and your careful attempt to analyze the poems specific lines. One part of your approach that holds you back, though, is the way you quote from the poem. You tend to quote one or two consecutive lines, which is a good approach in contemporary free verse poems where the unit of meaning is the line; in Keats's poetry, though, and most 19th century verse, the unit of meaning is not the line but the verse sentence: that is, the cluster of lines that contain and convey a thought. There may be many lines in a verse sentence--I have seen some poets use as many as thirty lines at times for a single sentence--but if you only quote one or two lines of that verse sentence you will not get to the shades of meaning or the context of the poet's point. In this post you often misstate what Keats is saying or implying, and I think it usually because you don't take into consideration part of his message. I would urge you to approach your quoting and analysis differently in your remaining posts, and even more in your research paper.
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