"Ode To A Nightingale"
John Keats

First Publication Date: 1820.

1     My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
2         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
3     Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
4         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
5     'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
6         But being too happy in thine happiness,--
7             That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
8                 In some melodious plot
9         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
10           Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

11   O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
12       Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
13   Tasting of Flora and the country green,
14       Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
15   O for a beaker full of the warm South,
16       Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
17           With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
18               And purple-stained mouth;
19       That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
20           And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

21   Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
22       What thou among the leaves hast never known,
23   The weariness, the fever, and the fret
24       Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
25   Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
26       Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
27           Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
28               And leaden-eyed despairs,
29       Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
30           Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

31   Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
32       Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
33   But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
34       Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
35   Already with thee! tender is the night,
36       And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
37           Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
38               But here there is no light,
39       Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
40           Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

41   I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
42       Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
43   But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
44       Wherewith the seasonable month endows
45   The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
46       White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
47           Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
48               And mid-May's eldest child,
49       The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
50           The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

51   Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
52       I have been half in love with easeful Death,
53   Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
54       To take into the air my quiet breath;
55           Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
56       To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
57           While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
58               In such an ecstasy!
59       Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
60             To thy high requiem become a sod.

61   Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
62       No hungry generations tread thee down;
63   The voice I hear this passing night was heard
64       In ancient days by emperor and clown:
65   Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
66       Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
67           She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
68               The same that oft-times hath
69       Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
70           Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

71   Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
72       To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
73   Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
74       As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
75   Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
76       Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
77           Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
78               In the next valley-glades:
79       Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
80           Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

NOTES

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Form:

ababcdedce

Composition Date:

spring 1819

2.

hemlock: a poisonous plant which produces death by paralysis.

4.

Lethe: a river of the lower world from which the shades drank, and thus obtained forgetfulness of the past.

7.

Dryad: a wood nymph.

13.

Flora: the goddess of flowers, here used for flowers themselves.

14.

Provençcal song. In the early Middle Ages the poets of southern France, the troubadours of Provence, were particularly famous for their love lyrics.

16.

Hippocrene: a fountain on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses.

33.

viewless: invisible.

43.

embalmed: full of balms, or perfumes.

46.

pastoral eglantine. Eglantine is properly the sweet-briar, though popularly applied to various varieties of the wild rose. "Pastoral" presumably because often referred to in pastoral poetry.

51.

Darkling: in the dark; cf Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 38-40: "As the wakeful Bird/Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid/Tunes her nocturnal Note."

67.

alien corn: alien because Ruth was not an Israelite but a Moabitess.