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Creating Meaning in Ode to a Nightingale

            The poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by the romantic poet John Keats is about a man sitting alone outside at night listening to a nightingale sing somewhere in the woods. As he listens to the nightingale's song he laments about how he wishes he could leave the world he belongs to and become a part of the nightingale's world. The poem creates this meaning through strong imagery, rhyme, and allusions to common mystical images that were well-known in the time period, all of which can be found in the fourth stanza of the poem. .
             The fourth stanza of the poem is filled with a lot of strong imagery. Keats describes flying to the nightingale on "the viewless wings of Poesy" (Keats line 33). "Poesy" is another word for poetry and the wings with which poetry will carry him to the bird on are "viewless" - they can't be seen. He describes the world of the nightingale as having "verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways" (Keats 40). It's a world that is very green but he also describes it as having "no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown" (Keats 38). The nightingale's world is dark except for the light "from heaven," from the sky above filtering down through the leaves of the trees in the forest. The world sounds very beautiful with the mossy paths and the light from the stars and the moon coming in slightly which may explain one reason why the speaker wishes to leave his own world behind. .
             It is interesting in this stanza to follow the rhyme pattern, as it allows the reader to make many new connections between lines. For example line 32 mentions Bacchus and ends with "his pards." Bacchus was the god of wine and the last word of that line, "pards" rhymes with the last word of line 34 which is "retards." What does wine do to one's senses but dull them? Another example would be that Keats rhymes the word "night" on the end of line 35 with the word "light" on the end of line 38.


Essays Related to Creating Meaning in Ode to a Nightingale

1. The Romatic Potes

They create feelings and mood throughout their work by means of the language used, intern helping to create images and the structure of a certain phrase or stanza can help to leave a lasting impression of an idea or emotion. ... In the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," he uses an Urn carved with figures to convey his feelings about the topic of immortality. ... Another of Keats" works expresses similar feelings about immortality, as it was within a three week period that Keats wrote a series of poems including Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale. ... Ode to a Nightingale tells the tale of t...

  • Word Count: 1388
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: High School

2. "Keats's Odes of May 1819 articulate a Profoundly Divided Se

The Odes, Ode To Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, Ode on Indolence and To Autumn were written in a period of around two weeks in May 1819. ... In its place he created and evolved a picturesque world, "painted in colours and felt intensely through the senses" (Ford 1945:32). ... Ode to a Nightingale expresses Keats's almost unbearable happiness induced by its song. ... In Ode to a Nightingale the illusive object which is inherently desired, is at last attained. ... The Ode to a Nightingale along with an Ode on Melancholy presents to the reader a centra...

  • Word Count: 2837
  • Approx Pages: 11
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

3. Christina Rossetti

Her references to the link between nature and emotion create a romantic atmosphere. ... As poet Maurice Bowra wrote, "Christina finds herself in her poetry when emotion has conquered her words, when then creates her most characteristic poetry" (Packer,29). ... Her use of the word "heart" had a soft meaning. ... This time, instead of using beautiful birds, flowers and trees, she used nightingale and rain. ... As Keats says in the "Ode On A Grecian Urn", "Beauty is truth, truth beauty- that is all." ...

  • Word Count: 847
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Let's be real

Though Flaubert is attributed for creating free indirect discourse, many other Realists began to use the technique in their writings. ... Monsieur Rouault "noticed that Charles tended to be flushed around his daughter's presencev/s meaning that one of these days he would ask for her hand" (Flaubert 864), and the narrator goes on to say that "Charles was a bit namby-pamby, not his dream of a son-in-law, but... he probably wouldnt haggle too much over the dowry" (864). ...

  • Word Count: 2157
  • Approx Pages: 9

5. How Are Freud's Theories Useful in Illuminating Texts of Rom

In "Ode to a Nightingale" he also mentions in stanza 2 "that I might drink, and leave the world unseen and with thee fade away into the forest dim" (Keats 850). ... However, the reason I feel that Keats, Browning, and Blake weren't as accepting of Freudian interpretations is because I think that each of these writers wanted their stories to have a greater meaning than what was actually written. ... I think that by adding Freudian terms into their writings does change the meanings of the poems to imply that each other the writers was sexually confused and not all there in the head. ... ...

  • Word Count: 1965
  • Approx Pages: 8
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Madame Bovary

Though Flaubert is attributed for creating free indirect discourse, many other Realists began to use the technique in their writings. ... Monsieur Rouault "noticed that Charles tended to be flushed around his daughter"s presenceaE"meaning that one of these days he would ask for her handaE (Flaubert 864), and the narrator goes on to say that "Charles was a bit namby-pamby, not his dream of a son-in-law, but... he probably wouldn"t haggle too much over the dowryaE (864). ...

  • Word Count: 2179
  • Approx Pages: 9
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7. Growth of Novels In The Victorian Age

An ode the woman herself, Queen Victoria, and the subsequent characteristics of the Victorian period In an unpredictable, tumultuous era, the stern, staid figure of Queen Victoria came to represent stability and continuity. ... Although an invalid, Florence Nightingale revamped the entire British military medical and supply system from her bedroom office. ... The Victorian Novel Created by the new profession of "novelists," a group that now included women as well as men; printed quickly and inexpensively on the new steam-powered printing presses and distributed efficiently over the kingd...

  • Word Count: 6746
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