#Nightingale symbolism free
Unlike humans, whose “hungry generations” (Line 62) prey on each other, the nightingale is free from emotions like greed and the burden of thought. The nightingale and its song symbolize a kind of timelessness that Keats associates with a pastoral existence. Thus, the flight represents a blurring of boundaries and a freedom from shackles.
The nightingale’s flight is compared to the movement of a dryad, a magical tree spirit, who can change from tree to a feminine form. Instead, the immortality the nightingale represents is freedom from the constraints of human existence. Immortality is a complex theme in the poem, since it doesn’t imply literal deathlessness-a nightingale is after all as much a mortal creature as a human being. As the adjective suggests, the nightingale is a symbol of immortality. Hales rightly observes that Keats’s song, as one hears it is like that of the nightingale as he heard it.The nightingale-referred to by its name only in the poem’s title-is the hyperbolic “immortal Bird” and the center (Line 61) of the poem’s universe. The leisurely, rhythmical movement of the verse, as well as the melody of the words makes the poem a jet of music like the song it celebrates. The description of a beaker of wine with “beaded bubbles winking at the brim” and “purple-stained mouth” is another instance of marvellous verbal pictures that fill the poem. Far greater things have been said by greater minds, but nothing more perfect in form has been said-nothing wider in scale and closer in utterance-by any mind of whatsoever pitch of greatness.” “It (the passage) shows a reach of expression which might almost be called the pillars of Hercules of human language. The passage is a wonderful example of perfect word-painting Rossetti says: As we read the passage we catch a vast vista of medieval times with the shadowy enchanter’s castle in a kingdom by the sea, the lonely tower of which encloses an imprisoned princess. Is unparalleled in the whole range of English poetry. Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.” “Charmed magic casements opening on the foam show the high water-mark of verbal perfection and of the concretization of imagery. “embalmed darkness’, “full-throated ease”, “purple-stained mouth”. The poem is remarkable for that “rounded felicity of expressions” which is as Matthew Arnold remarks, truly Shakespearean.
The description of the woodland scene is rich and vivid and the references to Lethe, Flora, Dryad, Hippocrene, Bacchus, etc, demonstrate how the Greek mythology appealed to him. The whole spirit of medieval romance and chivalry is crystallized in the poet’s passing reference to the forlorn princess imprisoned in an enchanter’s castle and waiting for her Knight to come to deliver her. The voice of the nightingale is the voice of romance and beauty, a voice that is deathless, in a world where beauty is evanescent and romance fleeting.
It denies nothing of human experience, and it makes a great affirmation that….the bitterest human experience, if it can be so contemplated by the imagination, turns, or can be transmuted into the beauty which is truth.” (Keats)Īmong the other elements of Keats’s poetry the Ode illustrates are his love of romance, deep delight in nature and Hellenism. “Its marvel is that it holds suspended, in a moment of absolute beauty, the tension between Time and Eternity, between Joy and Sorrow, between Mortality and Immortality, between Life and Death. But though the poem is tense with personal anguish, it would not be wise to call it a poem of despair. Beauty’s lustrous eyes are Fanny Brawne‘s and the new love that cannot “pine at them beyond tomorrow” refers to his own love that has already become an agony. The youth that grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies is his own brother Tom Keats who died five months before the poem was written. The poet is still sensuous, but his sensuousness is now touched with the still, sad music of humanity”, and shot through and through with the stirrings of an awakening intellect. It turns on the thought of the conflict between the ideal and the real-between the joy beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song, and the sorrow and transience of joy and beauty in human life, which lends a deep philosophic interest to it. The Ode is not only intensely sensuous but deeply reflective. Though the poet cannot see what flowers are at his feet or what blossoms are above his head, he can guess from the scent that the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the violet and the muskrose are blooming there. The bower of the nightingale is dark, but filled with perfume. The whole fifth stanza is a riot of sensuous enjoyment. With beaded bubbles, winking at the brim,
#Nightingale symbolism full
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
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