Keats Ode to a Nightingale - Passage Analysis

Question 1

WHAT sentence

Answer 1

Ode to a Nightingale stages a tension between the melancholy of mortal life and nature’s ability to liberate and delight the imagination.

Question 2

In the opening stanza, Keats laments the ‘aches’ and ‘pains’ of mortal life as he seeks escape through the ‘drowsy numbness’ of ‘hemlock’ and ‘opiate’.

Answer 2

• The melancholic diction accentuates the heaviness and arduousness of the quotidian.
• The cacophonous consonance of ‘drunk’, ‘dull’ and ‘drains’ serves to reinforce the sense of monotony in daily life.

Question 3

Addressing the bird as a ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’, Keats…

Answer 3

• Keats’ clipped and breezy assonance highlights seemingly effortless existence of nightingale – notably contrasts w/ earlier ponderousness of mortal life
• Sibilance of closing line underscores bird’s fulsome enjoyment of life’s pleasures as it ‘singest of summer in full throated ease.’

Question 4

Personification of bird as ‘Dryad’ further indicates…

Answer 4

indicates Keats’ deification of nature and his Romantic tendency to endow it with transcendent, almost magical properties.

Question 5

Moving into the second stanza, Keats’ tone shifts as he yearns for a ‘draught of vintage that hath been cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth’.

Answer 5

• Here, the alliterative ‘d’ underlines Keats’ desire to be closer to nature while his desire for a fine wine
• A ‘vintage’ – implies he now wishes to rejoice in the delights of nature rather than sedate himself as a form of escapism.

Question 6

Keats continues his glorification of nature as he describes the wine as ‘tasting of Flora’, comparing it to ‘Dance’, ‘Provencal song’ and ‘sunburnt mirth’.

Answer 6

In these examples, Keats utilizes synesthesia to hyperbolize nature, underscoring his appreciation of the natural world and its transcendence of everyday reality.

Question 7

But, as ever, Keats allows his imagination to wander freely and his revelry in the glory of nature ceases with a volta as he wishes to ‘fade away into the forest dim’.

Answer 7

• Euphonic consonance here continues into next stanza and reestablishes melancholic tone of opening stanza.
• Throughout third stanza, Keats’ paints a grim picture of mortal suffering and his anaphoric repetition of ‘where’ escalates his melancholy at indignity of human life.

Question 8

He laments the aging process ‘where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs’.

Answer 8

• His cataloguing of the adjectives ‘few’, ‘sad’ and ‘last’ demonstrate the ephemerality of human existence
• verb ‘shakes’ implies that while hairs will be ‘shaken’ free the human head for eternity, the loss of a trees’ leaves is merely a prelude to rebirth in the spring.

Question 9

WHY statement

Answer 9

Ultimately, the paradoxical nature of these stanzas serves to highlight Keats’ ambivalence towards the bird: on the one hand, it enables him to appreciate the joys of nature; on the other, it serves as a melancholic reminder of his own mortality