Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 1
My heart is aching and a sleepy numb feeling goes through my senses,
as it I had just drunk some hemlock poison,
Or I feel as if I had just drunk some opium sixty seconds ago, and now I
feel as if I am drifting off to the land of Forgetfulness:
It (this great feeling) is not because I am envious of your happy
situation but it is coming from the fact that I am so happy sharing in
your happiness,-
That you, light-winged tree spirit in this musical space/garden plot of
green beech trees and countless shadows, are singing about summer
with your throat fully open and relaxed.

Stanza 2
O, for a draught of vintage (wine) that has been cooled for a long age
in the deep-delved earth with the taste of country flora and the country
green, dance, and France song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a glass full of the warm South, full of the true, blushful magical
fountain water (Hippocrene) with the beaded bubbles winking at the
brim and purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world invisibly, and fade away into
the forest with the bird:

Stanza 3
I want to stop being human, dissolve and forget about what the bird
has never known about,
The weariness, the fever, the worry of being human here, where men
sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs, where youth grows pale,

Stanza 4
Away (with these depressing thoughts)! Let’s go! I will get to you bird,
not through alcohol but by the invisible wing of poetry, even though
my heaven brain confuses me and holds me back:
I’m almost there with you, the night is really inviting, and by chance
the Queen Moon is on her throne (full moon), surrounded by lots of
stars;
But there is no light down here, except there is a little light from
heaven when the breezes blow in through the green glooms and
winding mossy ways of the garden.
Stanza 5

Stanza 6
In the dark I listen; and for many times I have been half in love with the
Death, called Death soft names in many rhymes to take my quiet
breath into the air;
Now more than ever it seems wonderful to die, to cease upon the
midnight without pain while you pour forth your soul over the
countryside ecstatically!
If I were to die, you would still keep singing, and I would not be able to
hear anything—
To your high funeral music, I would become a lump of dirt.

Stanza 7
You were not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations would tread you down;
The voice which I hear this passing night was heard by emperor and
clown in ancient days:
Perhaps it is the same song that found a way through the sad heart of
homesick Ruth when she stood in tears amid the foreign field;
The same song that often has charmed open magic windows opening
on the foam of dangerous seas, in the forgotten fairy lands.

Stanza 8
Forgotten! The very word is like a bell to toll me back from you to my
isolated self!
Goodbye! The imagination cannot cheat so well as she is famous for
tricking little elf.
Goodbye! Goodbye! Your sad song fades past the near meadows, over
the still stream, up the hill-side; and now the music is buried deep in
the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a daydream?
The music is gone: Do I wake or sleep?