Critical Appreciation of Ode to a Nightingale:
Ode to a Nightingale is one of the greatest lyrics in English literature. It faithfully represents the entire poetic self of Keats. So it is called a representative poem of the poet.
White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine:
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk- rose, full of dewy wine.
The poem has a deep undertone of pathos. Keats is dissatisfied with the real world. The weariness, the fever and the fret of the world of reality make him feel unhappy. He wants to fade away and to dissolve from the world of reality:
Where men sit and hear each other groan:
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, lost gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow.
The treatment of the poem is consistently romantic. To the poet, the voice of the nightingale is the voice of romance and beauty. Keats sees in imaginations "the shadowy enchanter's castle in a kingdom by the sea, the lonely tower of which encloses an imprisoned princess ---- and when the rich full note of the nightingale breaks upon her captive ear, she opens the window to listen":
"The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn."
Keats was rich in the possession of the gift of Hellenism. In Ode to a Nightingale there are references to classical myths, legends and ideas. The bird is the "light-winged Dryad of the trees." The poet gives up the idea of flying up to the bird "charioted by Bacchus". Bacchus, the classical god of wine, drives his chariot by a pair of leopards.
Thus Ode to a Nightingale is a great poem in many respects. It is the high watermark in romantic poetry even in that age of romanticism in which it was produced.
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