Ode To A Nightingale Summary

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats was published in 1819. Keats was the oldest of four and lost his parents at an early age. His father died when Keats was eight after he fell off a horse and cracked is head open, his mother died six years later of tuberculosis. In 1816 he became a licensed apothecary, although he never pursued that profession, instead he became a poet. One may ask why he went through all the trouble of getting licensed and then decided to write poetry for a living. In 1817, he had his first volume of poems published titled Poems by John Keats. At the age of twenty-five on February 23, 1821, he died of tuberculosis. His terrible health has often been linked to his broken spirits from the bad reviews of his poems. The poem itself is 594 words in total, 80 lines, and contains 8 …show more content…
He talks about mortality and expression. When listening to the nightingale’s song, the speaker wished to abandon the human world to follow the bird’s carefree existence. The speaker believes the bird to be immortal. Generations have listened to the bird, imaginably, the same song helped many overcome sadness. The speaker, when referring to the nightingale, may be addressing his imagination. He imagines his adventure with the nightingale, and when he awakens, he wonders if he should wake up or go back to the dream. The overall mood of the poem is dark and mysterious. The speaker is depressed and thinking of death and human mortality. In the second stanza, he speaks of drinking something to fade away and die. “O for a beaker full of the warm South, / … That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, / And with thee fade away into the forest dim” (15,19-20). The poem specifies that it is an ode in the name Ode to a Nightingale. An ode is a type of lyrical poem that addresses a specific subject. An ode is a long, serious, and formal poem. This poem is about the nightingale and the speaker’s imaginative visions of