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: 

'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. 

 

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 Provençal 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: 

 

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. 

 

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: 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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; 

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 

                        In such an ecstasy! 

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— 

                   To thy high requiem become a sod. 

 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 

         No hungry generations tread thee down; 

The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

         In ancient days by emperor and clown: 

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 

                        The same that oft-times hath 

         Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well 

         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 

                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep 

                        In the next valley-glades: 

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? 

 

Structure of the poem

It has eight stanzas of ten lines each. The first seven and final two lines written in iambic pentameter and the eighth one follows trimetric pattern.

The rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE.

There is use of alliterations and allusion to biblical tale of Ruth.  The poet uses imagery, assonance and enjambment in different lines.

Summary of poem

The poem opens with a declaration of poet’s heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. The poet describes himself in a profound state of mental torment, engrossed in an unseen nightingale’s song. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest.

In second stanza, he yearns for the oblivion of alcohol, his wish for wine, by which he can escape the ordinary world and disappear into the happier world represented by nightingale.

 In third stanza, he expresses his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles of this world, the bird’s world is contrasted to all the pain such as aging, disease, and despair, that define human experience.

In fourth stanza, he rejects the escape the alcohol can give and prefers to fly through poetry, which will give him viewless wings. Overall, through his desire for symbolic union with the bird, stanzas two through four outline the poet’s desire to escape the human condition. 

In fifth stanza, poet says that he cannot see the flowers or plants around him, but he can smell them. He thinks that it would be so bad to die at night in the forest, with no one around except the nightingale singing.

In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of dying. In last stanza poet says that the nightingale cannot die. The nightingale must be immortal, because so many different kinds of generation of people have heard its song throughout history. In last stanza the poet’s vision is interrupted when the nightingale flies away and leaves him alone. He feels abandoned and disappointed that his imagination is not strong to create its own reality. He laments that his imagination has failed him and says that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale’s music was “a vision, or a waking dream.” Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether he himself is awake or asleep.

Critical analysis

Keats’ Ode to Nightingale is an excellent example of a different flavor of romanticism. Written in 1819, the poem explores the idea of immorality ecstasy and impermanence. It reveals the highest imaginative powers of the poet. The poet heard the song of nightingale in the gardens of his friend Charles Brown and inspired to write the poem. The sweet music of the nightingale sent the poet in rapture and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table, put it on the grass-plot under the plum tree and composed the poem. The song of the nightingale moves from the poet to the depth of his heart and creates in him a heartache and numbness as is created by the drinking of hemlock. He thinks that the bird lives in a place of beauty. When he hears the nightingale's song, he is entrenched by its sweetness and his joy becomes so excessive that it changes into a kind of pleasant pain. He is filled with a desire to escape from the world of caring to the world of beautiful place of the bird. It brings out the picture of human tragedy and expression of Keats’ pessimism and dejection. He composed this poem when his heart was full of sorrow with the death of his youngest brother and the poet himself was passionate for his beloved, Fanny Brawne.

The poem can be divided into three main thoughts. First is Keats’ evaluation of life. Life is full of sorrow and frustration but he feels happy to hear the song of nightingale. He wants to escape form life by his powerful imagination.

The second main thought is the wish of the poet that he might die and be free from life forever. He compares the suffering of human being with the immortality and the perfect happiness of nightingale. The third thought of the poem is the power of imagination.