[[charioted by Bacchus the god of wine. He rejects wine and prefers to travel by means of the imagination on the "wings of Poetry. He is now dreaming that it's nighttime and he's with the nightingale in the sky, but he cannot see any light or feel anything. As he starts to realize that in giving up suffering, he is also slowly giving up his physical senses. The narrator recognizes the lack of light, or lack of vision, and immediately mentions the breeze being blown. He's combined these senses to describe the light trickling through the leaves of the nightingale's tree being moved by the wind. He combines sight ("light") with touch/movement ("breezes blown"). This image describes light filtering through leaves moved by the wind
Metaphor: 1- Moon-queen: He means the nightingale. 2- poetry: he means his imagination. 3- brain: he means his imagination and using to wonderful words that perplexes their readers. 4- Fays: He means the other kinds of birds look like the nightingale's assistants and it is the first between them. 3- mossy: He means the soft leaves of the nightingale.
[COLOR="red"]Visual image:[/
COLOR] 1- the image of the poet flying on the wings of the poetry. 2- the image of the night, and the nightingale with other birds. 3- the image of the wind moving the
leaves of the nightingale
Personification: wings of poetry / Queen moon is on her throne/
Stanza four's relation to the
[COLOR="Red"]previous poems[/COLOR]:
From this stanza, we see that the poem is didactical: It teaches people that poetry has a great power of imagination that raises our souls.
5- I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense البخور hangs upon the boughs, أغصان رئيسية
But, in embalmed يعطر أو يحفظ darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows يهب ويمنح
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn الزعرور البري , and the pastoral رعوي eglantine; نوع من النبات اسمه نسرين
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.
In stanza five, he has lost all of his senses and everything seems foreign to him. He lets his imagination tell him what surrounds him, such as incense, flowers, the grass, the fruit-trees, the Hawthorne and the eglantine. Because his senses are useless, he has to rely on his brain for memories and imagination to assume certain flowers and trees are around him. I think the first line of this stanza, "I cannot see what flowers are at my feet," is also a way of talking about his sadness and admitting that because of his current state of depression, he can't see the finer things, or flowers, in his life. In the second line of the stanza he mentions, "soft incense hangs upon the boughs," (42). Here he combines touch, "soft;" with smell, "incense." Usually, the purpose of incense is to express desirable perfume, Combines touch ("soft"), weight ("hangs"), and smell ("incense).
Personification: the seasonable month endows/
Metaphor: 1- musk- rose: the glass which is full of wine. 2- flies: He means men.
Visual image: the image of the incense hanging, the flowers, the fruit trees, the Hawthorne and the eglantine.
6- 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! نشوة
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain --- تافه وعقيم
To thy high requiem موسيقى الموتى become a sod. الطبقة العليا من التربة
In the sixth stanza, the narrator is still longing for an "easeful death," The poet has longed for death before, wanting it to take his "quiet breath," so he addressed the death many times using soft rhymes. But he starts to think now would be an opportune time to die without any pain, listening to a melodic nightingale sing. Having reached this point in the dream, he soon realizes that his death would be in vain. His death would not be release from pain; it would mean non-existence, the inability to hear the nightingale's music that created his "ecstasy."
Personification: in love with easeful death/ call him with soft names/ my quiet breath
Metaphor: 1- midnight: He means the nightingale. 2- art: He means melodic nightingale sing. 3- ears in vain: The poet death would be in vain. 4- sod: his tomb.
Auditory image: the melodic nightingale song making the poet soul in a state of ecstacy.
Visual image: 1- the image of the poet calling his death. 2- the image of the poet suffering in his tomb.
7- 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, شفقة ورحمة when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, نوافذ opening on the foam
Of perilousخطير seas, in faery lands forlorn.
The seventh stanza is the narrator bringing himself back to the reality of life. The nightingale seems to live eternally because its song is the same now as it was in earlier days. Keats moves from the awareness of his own mortality in the preceding stanza to the perception of the bird's immortality in this stanza. But the narrator makes a mistake in claiming the bird is immortal, because it is in fact not. It is the music that will live on forever. The last word of stanza seven, "forlorn," (70) is repeated as the first word in stanza eight. This ties the dream to reality for the reader also, because it is as if something is calling him back to reality from his dream.
Exaggeration: immortal bird
Visual image: the image of sad Ruth feeling home-sick
Auditory image: the voice of the nightingale which will live through generations.
8- Forlorn محروم من ! the very word is like a bell
To toll يغري me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu وداعا ! the fancy الحب والخيال cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive حزين anthem نشيد ديني fades
Past the near meadows, مرج أخضر over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades: أرض فارغة في الغابة
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music --- Do I wake or sleep?
In the final stanza, "Forlorn!" (71) is ringing him back "like a bell." He is starting to realize that he cannot exist in both worlds and enjoy both of their finer qualities. He wants to die and escape from his pain, but if he does so he cannot hear the music of his nightingale. He's torn between the two existences. Now that the nightingale's song fades away, the narrator's escape is over and it leaves him wondering, "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?". It is as if he were questioning the validity of the experience, not knowing whether to trust his instincts. Despite his uncertainty, I think he slowly discovered that there does not have to be a distinction between a dream and reality.
Simile: like a ring: He likens the word 'forlorn' to a bell which shakes the poet.
Visual image: 1- the image of meadows and streams. 2- the image of Ruth which finds out that fancy is has cheated her. The image of the deep valley near the hill.
[Romanticism background to Paradox'
Keats belonged to a literary movement called romanticism. Romantic poets, because of their theories of literature and life, were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a new form of ode, often called the romantic meditative ode.
The literary critic Jack Stillinger describes the typical movement of [the romantic odeThe poet, unhappy with the real world, escapes or attempts to escape into the ideal. Disappointed in his mental flight, he returns to the real world. Usually he returns because human beings cannot live in the ideal or because he has not found what he was seeking. But the experience changes his understanding of his situation, of the world, etc.; his views/feelings at the end of the poem differ significantly from those he held at the beginning of the poem. pain and pleasure are intertwined in "Ode to a Nightingale". Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that is the theme of "Ode to a Nightingale" somewhat differently: "the world of imagination offers a release from the painful world of actuality, yet at the same time it renders the world of actuality more painful by contrast." Keats tries to free himself from the world of change by identifying with the nightingale, representing nature, or the urn, representing art. These odes, present the poet as dreamer; the question in these odes, as well as is how Keats characterizes the dream or vision. Is it a positive experience which enriches the dreamer? or is it a negative experience which has the potential to cut off the dreamer from the real world and destroy him? What happens to the dreamers who do not awaken from the dream or do not awaken soon enough?
Conclusion: Throughout the narrator's journey, he used the nightingale to figure out what he did and did not want with his life. In a way, he convinced himself to reject suicide as a way out of his problems. If he had not, he would not be able to enjoy everything life has to offer. He realized he should be able to enjoy the niceties in life without the use of wine, drugs or even dreaming, which is why I think he stopped using the synesthetic imagery toward the end of his journey. It had served its purpose in his confused beginning but he did not feel the need to make the connection for the reader between both realms in the end because he had come to clarification.
In this poem, creative expression vs. Mortality of Human life: passing of life and tragedies of old age contrast to the immortal flowing music of the nightingale.
- Numbness; running away from Life/Reality:
wants to use alcohol to escape at first then desires to flee with the bird (happiness/hope)
happy vicariously in the bird's happiness
connects with the bird, not reality
wants to use the "viewless wings" of poetry to reach the bird
- Life vs. Death:
admits that the music makes him ponder over his debate about embracing the idea of dying and submitting to death while vicariously living through the nightingale's music.
Life = Disappointment and Pain.
- Appearances vs. Reality:
- wants to escape from the inescapable
The 7th stanza's thoughts lead him to saying forlorn, his imagination must leave him.
The experience makes him long for the nightingale and hope and happiness. Speaker debates his actual state]][/
