John Keats was an English Romantic poet who died in England at the age of 25 of tuberculosis. His poetry is characterized by lots of imagery and a series of odes. At first, his poems weren't well received by the critics of his time but his reputation grew very much after his death. Today his poems are very popular and some of the most analyzed in English literature. In his short life, Keats composed some of the most beautiful poems which include six great odes written in 1819, two years before his death: Ode on Indolence, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Psyche, and To Autumn. The odes stand alone but they all explore many of the same themes, remarkably intertwining with each other. My favorite one of these is Ode to a Nightingale for it shows the beauty and immortality of nature, the power of imagination and creativity and the suffering of human life. .
In the Ode to a Nightingale the speaker, which we could assume to be Keats himself, feels heartache as a result of listening to a nightingale singing its songs of summer. We could assume that in this green and beautiful country environment the speaker seems to feel heartache as a reaction to the intense happiness he felt when listening to the bird and its blissful ignorance or maybe it was just jealousy but it doesn't appear to be the latter. With this reaction the speaker feels the temptation to drink what apparently could be wine ("O for a draught of vintage! (line 11)"). With this drink the speaker would fade away and take him out of himself to follow the bird through the forest ("That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,/ And with thee fade away into the forest dim" (lines 19-20)). It seems that the speaker wants to be able to reach the birds state of happiness, because the beautiful nightingale has never felt the sorrows of human life ("Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget/ What thou among the leaves hast never known,/ The weariness, the fever, and the fret").