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1、Ode to a Nightingale is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London. According to Keatss friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near his home in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the birds song, Keats composed the poem in one
2、 day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. Ode to a Nightingale is a personal poem that describes Keats journey into the state of Negative Capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Ke
3、atss earlier poems, and it explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being particularly personal to Keats.The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but it does not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which i
4、s a fate that humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world and sees himself deadas a sod over which the nightingale sings. The contrast between the immortal ni
5、ghtingale and mortal man, sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination. The presence of weather is noticeable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, which brought nightingales all over the heath. Many critics favor Ode to a Nightingale for its themes but some
6、 believe that it is structurally flawed because the poem sometimes strayed from its main idea.Ode to a Nightingale describes a series of conflicts between reality and the Romantic ideal of uniting with nature. In the words of Richard Fogle, The principal stress of the poem is a struggle between idea
7、l and actual: inclusive terms which, however, contain more particular antitheses of pleasure and pain, of imagination and commonsense reason, of fullness and privation, of permanence and change, of nature and the human, of art and life, freedom and bondage, waking and dream.22 Of course, the nightin
8、gales song is the dominant image and dominant voice within the ode. The nightingale is also the object of empathy and praise within the poem. However, the nightingale and the discussion of the nightingale is not simply about the bird or the song, but about human experience in general. This is not to
9、 say that the song is a simple metaphor, but it is a complex image that is formed through the interaction of the conflict voices of praise and questioning.AnalysisThe Ode to a Nightingale is a regular ode. All eight stanzas have ten pentameter lines and a uniform rhyme scheme. Although the poem is r
10、egular in form, it leaves the impression of being a kind of rhapsody; Keats is allowing his thoughts and emotions free expression. One thought suggests another and, in this way, the poem proceeds to a somewhat arbitrary conclusion. The poem impresses the reader as being the result of free inspiratio
11、n uncontrolled by a preconceived plan. The poem is Keats in the act of sharing with the reader an experience he is having rather than recalling an experience. The experience is not entirely coherent. It is what happens in his mind while he is listening to the song of a nightingale.Three main thought
12、s stand out in the ode. One is Keats evaluation of life; life is a vale of tears and frustration. The happiness which Keats hears in the song of the nightingale has made him happy momentarily but has been succeeded by a feeling of torpor which in turn is succeeded by the conviction that life is not
13、only painful but also intolerable. His taste of happiness in hearing the nightingale has made him all the more aware of the unhappiness of life. Keats wants to escape from life, not by means of wine, but by a much more powerful agent, the imagination.The second main thought and the main theme of the
14、 poem is Keats wish that he might die and be rid of life altogether, providing he could die as easily and painlessly as he could fall asleep. The preoccupation with death does not seem to have been caused by any turn for the worse in Keats fortunes at the time he wrote the ode (May 1819). In many re
15、spects Keats life had been unsatisfactory for some time before he wrote the poem. His family life was shattered by the departure of one brother to America and the death from tuberculosis of the other. His second volume of poetry had been harshly reviewed. He had no gainful occupation and no prospect
16、s, since he had abandoned his medical studies. His financial condition was insecure. He had not been well in the fall and winter of 1818-19 and possibly he was already suffering from tuberculosis. He could not marry Fanny Brawne because he was not in a position to support her. Thus the death-wish in the ode may be a reaction to a multitude of troubles and frustrations, all of which were still with him. The heavy weight of life pressing down on him forced O
