Ode to a Nightingale explores the notion of tension through Keat’s yearning to escape mortality while paradoxically being inescapably confined to it. Hearing the Nightingale’s song of immortal happiness allows Keats to reflect about the tragedy of human life and the misery of the human condition. It also connotes that because the Nightingale lives in nature, it is free from “ fever”, and “ fret”, and is not weakened and aged to death by society. The immortality of the Nightingale puts human life into perspective, it reveals the insignificance of human problems and the transience of mortality. Keats juxtaposes the vulnerability of human life with the idea that the Nightingale is eternal, “ Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” Oxymoron contrasts life and death and emphasises that the Nightingale exists in between the realm of dying and existing. It is a place where thoughts are “full of sorrow”, degrade the youth and the liveliness of human beings and causes them to become leaden-eyed” and fatigued from their own thoughts. Society causes individuals to grow old, weak and sick from stress and worry. The paranormal imagery emphasises the fragility of human mortality. “The weariness the fever ad the fret where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”. He becomes intoxicated and numbed by the conscious thought of his own mortality and human suffering. ”Keats ambivalent tone at hearing the Nightingale’s song fills him with the melancholic desire to escape society and be in the Nightingale’s world. At the beginning of the poem, Keats hears the song of a nightingale, “ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk. John Keats’ poem Ode to a Nightingale reveals the truth about the nature of the human condition and experiences. “ Now more than ever it seems rich to die” Death consists of emptiness and desolation, but the use of oxymoron in “rich to die” associates death as abundant, fertile, and rich in positive experiences and further reinforces his feelings of fulfillment and tranquility as a result of entering the nightingales world. The juxtaposition of two seasons, spring and summer occuring at once highlights that the world is created by Keats’ imagination is illogical and not bound my reality.His imagination connects him to the world of the Nightingale, recreates the tranquility and restorative effects of nature and allows Keats to escape the human world of mortality. A “ rose” flowers in spring, but the flies murmur on summer eves. He is able to imagine vividly his experiences of nature, “ The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” The rich and vivid olfactory, tactile and auditory imagery heightens the sublime elements of nature in the Nightingales world. Personification emphasises the route of Keats escape into the Nightingale’s world he undergoes an imaginative journey through constructing poetry, and although his “ dull brain perplexes and retards”, It is sufficient into transporting him into nature. In stanza 3 he says, “ Away! away! for I will fly to thee…on the viewless wings of Poesy”. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker John Keats longs to escape reality and to be in the world of the Nightingale. The Imagination has the ability connect an individual to natural worlds.
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