Analysis Of Keats ' Ode To A Nightingale as a Romantic Poem

Keats occupies a distinctly remarkable place in the realm of romantic poetry . His
fame rests on his odes. It is in these odes, that one comes into personal contact
with the mind of Keats. And it is here that we experience the depth of Keats '
struggle to control his personal experience and to give poetic expression. In the
bitter sweet poignancy of his experiences lies his romanticism. In his control over
them lies the Hellenism and classical quality of his poetry. The odes of Keats are
as all great poetry is, romantic and classical at the same time.
The Ode To A Nightingale is a romantic poem like Keats ' other odes and deals
with a world and experience which are different and remote from the real ones. It
presents a contrast between the real world and the world of imagination, of
between the world of human being and that of the Nightingale. According to
Cleanth Brooks the theme of the poem lies in the paradox -- The world of
imagination offers a release from the painful actuality yet at the same time it
sounds the world of actuality more painful by contrary.
The Ode To A Nightingale, embodying the very spirit of old romance, is the
most voluptuous and passionate in its emotions. At points the emotion threatens
to overpower the writer, and a hysterical euphemism here and there jars on the
reader. But for the most part the passion, for all its intensity, is focused and
controlled. David Masson observes one of the most remarkable characteristics of
Keats is the universality of his sensuousness. All of his five senses are equally
keen. For example his acute awareness of ' taste ' is reflected in passage like the
following:
" O , for a draught of vintage , that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep - delved earth.
Fasting of Flora and the country green,
Dame and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth.
His sharp feeling for ' touch ' is evident from the following lines:
" Nor what soft incense hangs up on the boughs
But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet
Where with the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and fruit - tree wild".
Such examples can easily be multiplied. But we should remember that Keats is
voluptuous not vulgar. He takes infinite delight in sensuousness, but they are
marked by a healthy restraint.

The Ode To A Nightingale shows the ripeness and maturity of his poetic
faculty. This poem is truly a masterpiece showing the splendour of Keats
imagination on its pure romantic side and remarkable also for its note of
reflection and meditation. The pictorial quality accompanied by sensuousness
provides us a picture gallery. If there are lines of fun and frolic, of merry making,
dancing and drinking, there is also the magnificent picture of the moon shining in
the sky ' clustered around by all her starry Fays '. Keats also draws a romantic
image of Ruth. Standing in the corn field she listens to the song of Nightingale
and her tears rolls down her cheeks. Her sorry heart is soothed by the song of the
Nightingale :
" Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Though the sad heart of Ruth , when , sick for home ,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ".
According to Courthope , poetry and plastic art merge and mingle in the works of
Keats .The poem Ode To Nightingale is written superb in style. It displays
Keats power as a master of poetic language at its highest. Keats here shows
consummate skill in a choice of works and in making original and highly
expressive phrase .Keats has used several marvelous pictorial phrases, which
condense the essence of an image . For example ----' Laden eyed despair ', ' beaded bubbles winking at the brim ' 'the murmurous
haunt of flies ', ' charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam / of perilous sea ,
in faery lands forlorn , etc.
The touch of supernatural; the mystery and its suggestiveness adds medievalism
which is a romantic trend. The charm'd magic casements, ' story of Ruth ' are two
beautiful examples. Again his love for classical Greek literature is reflected in the
reference of Lethe, Dryad, Flora, Bacchus, Hippocrene etc.
Keats observes and portrays the various aspects of nature in his Ode To A
Nightingale like his Sleep and Poetry, Endymion etc. He follows the
genuine poetic art and his is the beauty perceived through senses. In his poetry
there is addition of strangeness to beauty with slight medieval touches. In Ode
To A Nightingale Keats remains a great romantic poet with classical strain in
his nature and poetic expression .