![]() That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,.But being too happy in thine happiness,.‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,.One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:.Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,.My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains.In a state of utter confusion and depression, he pines for what he has lost. A tone of sadness pervades the poet’s mind. And what remains is the overintense craving for the joy that is no more. The worshipper of beauty is brought back to the filth and frailty of the real life. ![]() The song of the nightingale fades away in the forest dim, leaving the poet amid the din and bustle of a dying race. The loveliness of the bird’s song cannot triumph long in man’s mind, lost in earthly sorrows and sufferings. The poet fails to escape as easily as he has hoped. The despondency of the poet is too severe to allow him to live for ever in the realm of fancy, imagination, and beauty. The spell of beauty is soon broken in the heat of the sordid reality of the poet’s life. The voice I hear this passing night was heardīut the world of men is so ugly and so sickly that even the conception of beauty cannot last long here. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! And the poet eulogizes the immortality of the bird’s song: It remains a joy for men and women of all ages, nations, and classes. But the case, thinks Keats, is not so with the song of the nightingale. Among men, each generation, in its struggle for existence, tramples down its predecessors. The survival of the fittest is the very condition of man’s existence. Changes and chances do not come over the song of the bird. It continues and is cherished with joy and wonder by all-the new and the old, the rich and the poor. But the song, as the representative of the whole species, never ceases to please men and women. His subject is the song, of the bird-the joy that the song gives. But Keats is speaking not of an individual bird, which lives and dies, like a human being. Keats’s thought, of course, lacks logic here. Keats’s nightingale remains immortal amid the mournings and moanings of this mortal world as a thing too beautiful to die, too joyous to fade. Since beauty can never die, the joy given by it is eternal. ![]() Keats breathes the very breath of beauty in the song of the bird. To Keats, the song of the nightingale is a thing of beauty-the beauty that has no end. Here, where men sit and here each other groan ”įrom the woe and weariness of the maddening world of man, Keats longs to attain peace and bliss, given by the sweet and joyous, melody of the nightingale. What thou among the leaves hast never known, “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget The poet wants to escape from the chaotic and dreadful world, to leave the world unseen and, with the nightingale, to fade away into the forest dim: The contrast leads him to realise that the world of man is one of fevered thoughts and bitter frustration, whereas the realm of the nightingale is one of romance, loveliness, and eternal beauty. Keats starts his poem with a contrast between the ecstatic joy, the ever-appealing music, and the apparent immortality of the song of the nightingale and the sorrow, change, and fatality in human life. There is a transition in the poet’s mood from dreamy ease and idle fancy to poignant despondency and pensive contemplation, as he realizes the transitoriness of human pleasure and the mortality of man’s desire. The poem records the aching joy and the ‘leaden-eyed’ despair, the lyrical passion, and the bitter pain of the poet’s mind. ![]() ![]() But it carries with it a note of sad reflection-a tone of bitter meditation that seizes upon the man of the world, fatigued with the ‘fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world. John Keats’ famous poem Ode to a Nightingale is a poem of romance. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |