Trace the evolution
of thought in Ode to a Nightingale.
“This ode (to a Nightingale) is the greatest, as concerned composition,
that Keats made, and is the richest in variety of passionate expression.” -Prof
Etton
Four of Keats’ odes Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on
a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn should be studied
together. They were all written in 1819 and the same train of thought runs through
them all. One can even say that these four odes sum up Keats’ philosophy. The
first written of the four, Ode to a
Nightingale is the most passionately human and personal of them all. It
was written soon after the death of Keats’ brother Tom, to whom he had been
deeply attached and whom he nursed to the end. Keats was feeling keenly the
tragedy of a world in which “youth grows
pale, and spectre- thin, and dies.” The song of the nightingale aroused in
him a longing to escape with it from this world of sorrows to the world of
ideal beauty. Instead of discussing philosophical way, Keats projects this
longing through a spontaneous thought process.
Joyous and ecstatic thought in the opening two stanzas:
The poet’s mood in the two
opening two stanzas is one of joy and ecstasy which almost benumbs his senses.
This mood is due to the rapturous song of the nightingale. This mood leads him
to desire for a beaker of wine by drinking which he can forget this world or
sorrows and misfortunes and “fade away
into the forest dim” where the nightingale is singing its joyous song.
Tragic thought in the next stanza:
Joyous and ecstatic thought changes into deep tragic thought in the third stanza. Here the poet refers to “the weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of human life.
