Ode to Nightingale by John Keats: Response and Interpretation - Essay Example

He or she dreams of a place where there is no more pain or aging, where love is not the knife in the wound that he is currently experiencing. The narrator finds the bird a symbol of everlasting joy and life, in contrast to the pain of life and the inevitability of death. The joy of life that is without the threat of the pains of life is embodied in the nightingale, a world created around the creature that is fantastical and without the burdens of being human. The first verse begins by discussing the state of the narrator that for the purposes of this discussion will be assumed to be Keats, thus referred to as he or him.

He first states quite clearly that he is in a state of pain, relevant to that of heartbreak and defined by his numbness, so overwhelmed by the heartache that he is in this state. In contrast to the numbness that he is experiencing, he speaks of hearing a sound that is without the feelings that are burdening him. He is sitting in the numbness that follows too much pain, but hears the song of the nightingale that is too joyful and too at ease within the world. He goes so far as to call it “some melodious plot”, suggesting that it is a plot to remind him of life and joy, where he is not of a mind to be reminded of these things.

In the second verse discusses a longing that he has to join in a life where the burdens of the heart are not so poignant, that he might have a taste of the innocence of his past, wizened by age, but not burdened by that knowledge. He says “O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been /Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,” (Keats and English History.net). suggesting that he wants to take in something of the world that he is imagining and by drinking of it, become a part of the ancient world and those creatures blessed by immortality who do not think on mortal pains, but dream and exist in the natural world as a spiritual part of that place.

He is looking from release from what it means to be human, to live within a space that is without the feelings that have taken him from pain into numbness where he no longer can engage with his own world. He desires to be a part of some ‘other’, some feeling that sends him to a space of nothingness so that all that he is embodies nature. He states “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, /And with thee fade away into the forest dim:” (Keats and English History.net). He suggests he wants to fade from his life and join the nightingale within the mysteries of the forest.

It is during the third verse that the crux of his problems are revealed he states “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget /What thou among the leaves hast never known,” (Keats and English History.net). The beginning of this verse clearly states that he wants to go where his feelings have never been known or felt, erasing them from his experience. He describes the plight of men as “The weariness, the fever, and the fret/Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; /Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, /Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; /Where but to think is to be full of sorrow  / And leaden-eyed despairs,”.

In his feelings of numbness, the aftermath of what can only be thought of as a deep and dramatic experience which has drained him of his joy for life, he describes both the loss of youth and death as parts of the experience that he is