George Gordon Byron

BIOGRAPHY
 George Gordon Byron simply known as Lord Byron
 Leading figure in Romanticism
 Born with a club foot which caused him much humiliation.
 Inherited his great-uncle’s title at the age of 10.
 Early Life Attended Cambridge University Had romances with several women, many of them married Many
bisexual love affairs and debts Rumors of incest with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, from whom he had a baby.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was first published in 1812. This poem was his first major work and brought him
fame as a poet. He continued adding to it over the next several years and finalized it with Canto 4 in 1818.  Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage is based on Lord Byron's travels after his self-imposed exile from Great Britain. Many historians
believe that it is at least partly autobiographical.

Lord Byron went on to write hundreds of poems which he published in many volumes. His most famous poems
include “And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair” (1812), “She Walks in Beauty” (1814), “Darkness” (1816), “The
Prisoner of Chillon” (1816), “The Eve of Waterloo” (1818), and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18).
Interesting Facts
 It was alleged he had sex with over 250 women over the course of a year while in Venice.
 He fell in love with a man named John Edleston while at school.
 He fell ill a few days before he planned to attack a Turkish Fortress. He died before he could attack the
Fortress.
 He was born with a club foot and became extremely sensitive about his lameness.
 Left England in 1816, never to return Affair with Shelley’s half-sister Claire He died in Greece of a fever on
19 April 1824. He had gone to fight for Political freedom against Ottoman Empire. He died as a hero in their
minds.
Notable Works
 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage lengthy narrative poem It was published between 1812 and 1818. the travels and
reflections of a world-weary young man disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry looking for
distraction in foreign lands; an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of
the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title
for a candidate for knighthood. The poem contains elements thought to be autobiographical. Byron traveled
through the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea between 1809 and 1811[1]. Byron's distaste for the poem: he
felt it revealed too much of himself, bringing him a large amount of public attention. Byron stated that he
woke up one day and "found me famous." The work provided the first example of the Byronic hero The poem
has four cantos written in Spenserian stanzas, which consist of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one
alexandrine (a twelve-syllable iambic line) and has a rhyme pattern ABABBCBCC.
 Don Juan Satiric poem based on the legend of Don Juan Portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone
easily seduced by women Byron’s masterpiece Social, political, literary, and ideological levels Two first
cantos were published anonymously He completed 16 cantos, leaving the 17th unfinished.
 Byronic hero
 A distaste for social institutions and  Emotionally conflicted, bipolar
norms tendencies, or moodiness
 An exile, an outcast, or an outlaw, a  High level of intelligence and
troubled past perception
 Arrogant, Cynical, Disrespectful of  Mysterious, magnetic, and charismatic
rank and privilege  Powers of seduction and attraction
 Cunning and ability to adapt, lead to social and sexual dominance
Struggles with integrity.  Self-destructive behavior, Self-critical
 “Dark” attributes not normally and introspective
associated with a hero.  Sophisticated and well-educated

'She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night. Of cloudless climes and starry skies.
And all that’s best of dark and bright.
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Thus, mellowed to that tender light.
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace.
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face.
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

“She Walks in Beauty”

Summary
The speaker compares a beautiful woman walking to a clear night sky full of bright stars. The finest light and darkness
harmonize this woman's appearance, particularly within her eyes. This gentle and delicate play of light is heavenly—
indeed, heaven usually refuses to grant this supernatural light to the showy daytime.

A touch more shade or even one ray of light would have greatly diminished the woman's beauty. This beauty, which is
hard to put into words, shows itself in every strand of the woman's hair and gently falls on her face. Her sweet, angelic
emotions play out on her face, revealing how pure and precious this woman is.

On the woman's cheek and forehead, winning smiles and a glowing skin tone appear softly and calmly, but noticeably.
These features reveal that the woman spends her days virtuously, possesses a peaceful mind, and has an innocent,
loving heart.

Description
"She Walks in Beauty" is a famous poem by British Romantic poet Lord Byron, first published in 1815. The poem
praises and seeks to capture a sense of the beauty of a particular woman. The speaker compares this woman to a lovely
night with a clear starry sky and goes on to convey her beauty as a harmonious "meeting" between darkness and light.
After its discussion of physical attractiveness, the poem then portrays this outer beauty as representative of inner
goodness and virtue.
“She Walks in Beauty” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
 Alliteration  Enjambment
 Antithesis  Sibilance
 Assonance  Simile
 Caesura  Parallelism
 Consonance  End-Stopped
 Diacope

Major Themes
• Beauty
Romantic poets sought to idealize beauty by exploiting emotions. The reactive feelings of the speaker come to life
when the woman walks past, her obvious outer beauty reliant on the inner.
• Harmony
Light and dark exist together in the psyche of this female, opposite qualities delicately balanced but producing
something extra.
She Walks in Beauty: symbols.
The main symbols in 'She Walks in Beauty' are grace, light rays, heart, and cloudlessness.
• 'One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace’. These lines illustrate the
importance the poet places on harmony and balance for beauty. The subject of the poem has achieved the perfect
balance of light and dark.
• 'A heart whose love is innocent! ‘Consider the effect of the exclamatory sentence mood here in expressing the
depth of the poet’s emotion and convictions.
• 'Of cloudless climes and starry skies’ ‘Cloudless' could be interpreted in relation to both her appearance and
character. No flaw of personality or physical blemish (such as a freckle, birthmark, or sunspot) hides or ruins her
perfection.
• 'That tender light/ Which heaven to gaudy day denies.' This line further solidifies Lord Byron’s representation
of his subject as possessing a transcendental, celestial beauty
Analysis of Rhyme and Metre
'She Walks in Beauty' is a rhyming poem of 3 equal stanzas, 18 lines in total.
• Rhyme- All the end rhymes are full (except for brow/glow which is a near rhyme) and the rhyme scheme is:
ababab where alternate rhymes add to and complement the idea of balance and harmony. For example: night/bright.
• Metre-The dominant metre throughout is iambic tetrameter, that is four feet per line each having one
unstressed syllable followed by one that is stressed. This steady rhythm produces a regular beat:
Example: She walks / in beau / ty, like / the night
Of cloud / less climes / and star / ry skies.
However, there is one line where a metrical inversion occurs. The iambic foot becomes trochaic, the stressed syllable
being first, the unstressed second:
Example: Meet in / her as / pect and / her eyes;

• This trochee draws attention to the fact that the two opposites (dark and bright) join forces in her appearance.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the poem belongs to the minor works of the author, and its importance appears when it is published as a
poem of the “Hebrew Melodies” in 1815. “She Walks in Beauty” reflects the author about the beauty, and it is made
after he met his cousin at a party. And the most remarkable part of that poem is its validity in present times. Generally,
poetry does not become old. Poetry is contemporary, and “She Walks in Beauty” reflects this. This poem could be a
present poem because its sense and its meaning could be applied to today’s beauty. Beauty remains equal, is always
the same, in the past and in present times, and moreover, it will remind in the future. Although in each period of time
the beauty’s canons change, the sense of beauty, and its meaning, is the same. And if we did not know the date of the
poem, probably we would consider the poem as a present poem.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Summary

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is subtitled A Romaunt which invokes Medieval tales of knights who seek out holy
objects. Although Byron went out of his way to identify the speaker as Harold, audiences of the time noted many
similarities between the poem’s protagonist and Lord Byron himself. Whether the speaker represented Byron or not,
what becomes notable is the protagonist’s common themes with future protagonists in Byron’s work. The
characteristics became so comparable that Bryon’s main character was coined the “Byronic Hero.”

The Byronic Hero contains mixed traits that complicate the typical good vs. evil boundaries. The Byronic Hero is a
mix of hero and villain that includes complicated psychologies of moodiness, depression, and darkness with loyalty,
heroism, and adventure. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is divided into four cantos.

ANALYSIS
Cantos I
Lord Byron began Childe Burun, which then became Childe Harold by the end of the year when he finished Cantos I.
The poem's protagonist, Harold, leaves his home searching for spiritual enlightenment. The poem is a quest poem and
a Romaunt, a kind of a tale of a knight going in search of holy objects. Harold is the first protagonist to be dubbed a
"Byronic Hero." In this canto, Byron criticizes the poverty in Portugal even though he finds the country to be
beautiful.
Cantos II
In 1810 Byron finished Cantos II, which was a literary blend of his travels abroad in Albania and his pondering on
Greece. The cantos explore much of Byron's travel, including his travel to Greece, where he lamented Greece's bygone
glory days. In 1811, Byron's first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were published. The first edition of 500
copies printed sold out within a few days. The second edition of 3000 copies went out shortly after that. After
publishing the first two cantos, Byron gained instant fame in England. Byron reflected, ''I awoke one morning and
found myself famous.'' The popularity of Bryon's work was owed less to his interesting travel writing and more to his
exhaustion around the French Revolution. Readers related to the toll the Napoleonic wars had taken on the general
population's psyche.
Cantos III
The third canto develops four main themes. The speaker is alone, sad, and in exile from his loved ones. The second
theme includes an analysis of the pros and cons of Napolean and Rousseau as the speaker compares himself to these
two men. The third theme is war, and the fourth theme is nature. The third canto was published in 1817. The
publication was very successful, and Lord Byron was the leading poet of the time.
Cantos IV
Cantos IV contrasts the greediness of the Empire with the transcendence of the arts. Byron mourns the glory days of
Greece. The tone of the fourth canto is melancholic and full of lament over the idea of a once-dazzling Empire's
downfall.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Analysis

While each canto has its own personality and subject matter, the major themes of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage center
around a poet-speaker who goes in search of deeper spirituality. The term child is a medieval term that refers to a yet-
to-be-knighted young person. The allusion to medieval terminology stems from Byron’s interest in Spenerian poetry
and the use of ancient modes to illustrate a romantic search for the sacred.

Major Themes
• Loneliness
Loneliness is the primary feeling throughout Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
• War
Childe Harold speaks of war throughout Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He despises war but calls the soldier’s gallant.
He talks of the Napoleonic wars when in Spain by saying, “Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief, / A scene
where mingling foes should boast and bleed.” He describes the blood and horrors of war in every country he visits
except Switzerland.
• Nature
Childe Harold uses nature almost like medicine. He describes some cities but focuses on the mountains, lakes, and
other scenery around each city he visits. He comments that nature is “the kindest mother still” and the “fairest in her
features wild.” He thinks of nature as kind and beautiful and chooses to be out of the cities as much as possible. He
describes the mountains and ocean as his friends and home and wants only the companionship of the wilderness.
He notes that nature will always be there even when everything people create is destroyed. He states, “Art, Glory, and
Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.”

SYMBOLS
• Athena
Athena is a symbol of war. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage begins Canto 2 with a description of Athena where the narrator
calls her the “Goddess of Wisdom,” but in Greek mythology Athena was also the goddess of war. The narrator asks
Athena, “Where are thy men of might, thy grand in soul?” He notes that the men of might who defended Greece
against an invasion by the Persians during the Persian Wars (492–49 BCE) are gone. War and fire caused the Greeks to
stop worshipping Athena.
• The Ocean
The ocean is a symbol of Childe Harold’s freedom. He leaves Albion or England on a ship. The ocean surrounds
England and he cannot leave without a way to cross it. He felt isolated in England and grew to hate living there.
Characters
• Childe Harolde is a young British man. He is lonely and melancholy. Read More
• Ada Byron (1815–52) is the muse that Childe Harold invokes for Canto 3. Ada was Lord Byron's daughter
with his wife Annabella Milbanke (1792–1860).
• Ada Byron's mother was Lord Byron's wife Annabella Wilbanks (1792–1860). Annabella divorced Lord
Byron in 1814 and historians believe that this was at least part of the cause of his self-imposed exile from England.
• Ianthe is the muse Childe Harold calls on for his Canto 1. Scholars note that Ianthe was the real-life Lady
Charlotte
• Harley (1801–80), a child Lord Byron knew in England.
• Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. Childe Harold addresses Canto 2 to her as his muse.
• Inez is a woman that Childe Harold who dedicates an ode to in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
• Ali Pasha (1741–1822) is a warrior Childe Harold meets in Albania.
• The narrator tells of Childe Harold's adventures with insights into Childe Harold's thoughts.

John Keats (Biography)

(October 31, 1795– February 23, 1821) was an English Romantic poet of the second generation, alongside Lord Byron
and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He is best known for his odes, including "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale,"
and his long-form poem Endymion. His usage of sensual imagery and statements such as “beauty is truth and truth is
beauty” made him a precursor of aestheticism.

John Keats
• Known For Romantic poet known for his search for perfection in poetry and his use of vivid imagery. His
poems are recognized as some of the best in the English language.
• Born: October 31, 1795, in London, England
• Parents: Thomas Keats and Frances Jennings
• Died: February 23, 1821, in Rome, Italy
• Education: King's College, London
• Selected Works: “Sleep and Poetry” (1816), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819),
“Hyperion” (1818-19), Endymion (1818)
• Notable Quote: "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty,'—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
John Keats’s Style and Popular Poems
Keats’s diction is highly connotative. His writing style is characterized by sensual imagery and contains many poetic
devices such as alliteration, personification, assonance, metaphors, and consonance. All of these devices work together
to create rhythm and music in his poems. His most popular poems include “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode on a Grecian
Urn,” “Ode to Autumn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “La Belle Dame Sans Mercy,” “Imitation of Spenser,” “Hyperion,”
and “Isabella.” Among his sonnets, the most popular is “Bright Stars! Would I were steadfast as Thou Art,” “When I
have Fears that I may Cease to be,” “Endymion,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and “Lamia?”
Notable Works:
 Ode on Melancholy  La Belle Dame Sans Mercy
 Ode on a Grecian Urn  Imitation of Spencer
 Ode to Autumn  Hyperion
 Ode to Nightingale  Isabella

La Belle Dame sans Merci

‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ tells the story of a knight who is seduced by a fairy-like woman. At first, it seemed to the
knight that all his dreams were coming true. He had finally found the beautiful woman he was looking for.
Unfortunately for him, he was lured away from his path. He woke up, cold, alone, and disappointed. Was the
experience a dream? Probably, but that hardly matters in the larger scheme of things. John Keats was more interested
in exploring dream states and other worlds than depicting something realistic.

Summary

La Belle Dame sans Merci’ by John Keats is a beautiful poem about a fairy who condemns a knight after seducing him
with her singing and looks.

The first three stanzas introduce the unidentified speaker and the knight. The speaker comes across the knight
wandering around in the dead of winter when “the sedge has withered from the lake/ And no birds sing.” In this way,
Keats depicts a barren and bleak landscape.
The knight responds to the speaker, telling him how he met a lady in the meadows who was “full beautiful, a faery’s
child”. Here, Keats’ language sweetens. The first three stanzas were bitter and devoid of emotion, but the introduction
of the “lady in the meads” produces softness in the language of the knight. He reminisces on the lady’s beauty and her
apparent innocence – her long hair, light feet, and wild eyes – and on her otherworldliness, as well. Moreover, he
describes his sweet memories of the Lady: feeding each other, giving her presents, traveling with her, and being
together.

In the eighth stanza, the lady weeps for she knows that they cannot be together as she is a fairy, and he is a mortal. She
lulls him to sleep out of which he does not immediately wake. In his dream, the knight sees pale people like kings,
princes, and warriors. They tell him that he has been enthralled by the woman without mercy. He wakes up from the
nightmare alone, on the cold hillside, and tells the persona that is why he stays there, wandering, looking for the lady.
The last stanza leaves the fate of the knight ambiguous.
Meaning
Keats’ ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ describes the short encounter between a knight and a fairy lady. The title of
the poem is interesting as it isn’t Keats’ own invention. He adopted the title of Alain Chartier’s French courtly poem
‘La Belle Dame Sans Mercy’. In French, the phrase means, “A Beautiful Lady Without Mercy “. Readers can see the
variation of the words “Mercy” and “Merci”. It seems that Keats went with the French spelling of the word.
Alain Chartier wrote that poem presumably in 1424 and the poem consists of 100 stanzas. Whereas Keats’ poem is
comparably short and doesn’t follow Chartier’s octosyllabic line pattern. Apart from that, as the poet directly chose a
French phrase, the title also follows the French pronunciation.

Structure and Form

‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is after the form of the lyrical ballad. Many well-known poets of the romantic era used
this form in their written works. This particular ballad has a meter and rhyme scheme that produces a flow that
engages the reader.
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, which simply means that the stress falls on four words per line. The effect of
this scheme is that it flows like a song, smoothly and with rhythm. Thus, it is called a lyrical ballad. The rhyme and
rhythm are all designed to lure the reader in, just as the knight in the poem was lured in by the beautiful fairy-woman.
Keats wrote this in an outdated form of poetry that capitalizes on simple language and imagery to bring across its
story. By utilizing the ballad form, it lends the poem an air of timelessness and an almost novelistic approach to
imagery. Even the story itself is evocative of the ballad tradition. Ballads were used as entertainment, and their length
was supposed to keep listeners engaged, as the ballad was a form of oral poetry.
Tone and Mood
The tone and mood of this poem are also designed to help the readers to identify with John Keats’ feelings as he
neared the end of his life. One could argue that the Knight in this poem is Keats himself. Although there are some
differences between his life and the knight’s story, there are certainly plenty of similarities that would suggest that he
uses the knight as a speaker to proclaim to the world just what he feels as he neared his untimely death.

Literary Devices
• Anaphora: The poem begins with an apostrophe. Using it, the poet introduces the knight as well as evokes his
spirit into the poem.
• Metaphor: In “squirrel’s granary” the poet uses a metaphor. Here, the poet refers to the squirrel’s hole. In
“fever-dew” there is a metaphor and the comparison is between the dew and the fever.
• Personal Metaphor: In “starved lips” there is a personal metaphor.
• Metonymy: The word “death-pale” is a metonym. The kings and princes look pale as they have died. It’s a
reference to the cause in place of the effect of being pale.
• Synecdoche: The poet refers to the color of the lily in the line “I see a lily on thy brow”. It’s a use of
synecdoche.
• Alliteration: It occurs when the poet uses the same consonant sounds at the beginning of lines. For example,
“Full” and “faery” in line two of the fourth stanza and “light” and “long” in the following line. The phrase “her hair”
contains another alliteration.
• Circumlocution: The phrase, “fragrant zone” contains this device. It seems that the knight has made a garland
that touches the lady’s bosom.
• Allusion: There is a biblical allusion in the line, “And honey wild, and manna-dew”.
• Palilogy: The poet uses this device by repeating the word, “wild” twice.
• Repetition: The last stanza contains a repetition of the idea present in the first line of the poem.
• Caesura: It occurs when the poet uses a pause in the middle of a line. For example, “And there I dreamed—
Ah! woe betide! —” and “Full beautiful—a faery’s child.”
• Imagery: It can be seen through the powerful images in the knight’s dreams as he’s forced to suffer terrible
nightmares. For example, “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, / With horrid warning gaped wide.”
Themes
• Dejection of love
• Heartbreak
• Sadness
• Death
• Illusion vs reality.
Symbols
Paleness
All of the men who fall beneath the woman's spell are pale and weary, suggesting illness or a loss of vitality. At the
same time, the lily—a white flower with a powerful symbolic history—upon the knight's brow indicates his purity,
virtue, and chivalrous honor. The paleness of the men in the night’s dream could also express fear: the absence of
color in their face reflects the horror of being trapped upon the hillside by the woman's charms, stuck somewhere been
nightmare and reality.
Lily
In a biblical tradition, the lily is commonly associated with the ideas of purity and innocence. By alluding to the purity
of the lily, the speaker lets us know that the knight appears to retain his honor despite his poor state. It could also
allude to innocence or ignorance, meaning the knight may not fully believe that he was tricked by the woman,
believing he may come across her love again someday. Finally, given that lilies are often used at funerals (to signify
the purity of the soul of the deceased), the lily may allude to the death-like state in which the knight wanders.

Characters
The speaker
A man who notices a fellow knight wandering through a chilly hillside one evening.
The knight
The "haggard" knight who appears to the speaker on a hillside and relates to the speaker his encounter with a beautiful
woman on the same hillside.
The beautiful woman
A mysterious, enchanting woman who lives in the hillside. She possesses supernatural charms, and each man she
meets succumbs to the power of her spells.

Conclusion
La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is Keats’ life and emotions set into verse. It is a story of unrequited love, illness, and the
impossibility of being with whom one cares for when they are from different social classes. Keats ends 'La Belle
Dame sans Merci' with the line with which the first stanza ends. He repeats the first speaker's observation that “the
sedge is withered from the lake/ And no birds sing”. The readers are left to grieve the loss of the knight. He dies alone
with no one to comfort him in his last moments.

Ode to a Nightingale
In this poem, which is very likely John Keats’ most well-known, the nightingale plays an important role. The speaker
listens to it sing and feels jealous of its carefree life. Inspired by the song, he considers giving himself over to the
woods and trying to seek out the same kind of freedom the nightingale has. He even thinks about allowing himself to
die in the woods. This beautiful vision that the speaker has been entranced by is broken when the bird flies off. The
speaker is left alone. The confusion he felt at the beginning of the poem returns. He is unable to determine what was
real and what was a dream.

Summary
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ was written in 1819, and it is the longest one, with 8 stanzas of 10 lines each. It was written at
Charles Brown’s house, after Keats was struck by the melancholy singing of a nightingale bird, and it travels through
the cabal of the Greek gods, all the while emphasizing the feeling of melancholy – a tragic and often very Greek
emotion that Keats would have no doubt learned through his readings.
• Popularity: Written by John Keats, a popular romantic poet, “Ode to Nightingale “is a phenomenal poem that
relates life’s sufferings to the briefness of the bird’s song. It was first published in 1819. The poem explores the
wonder of life and death. It comprises the experience of the poet, his miseries, and his poetic imagination. Its
popularity lies in the fact that it represents things related to life, art, literature, and nature and seeks a common
relationship among them.
• As a Representative of Life and Death: The poem explores two main issues: the first is the connection
between agony and joy and the second is the connection between life and death. The poet very artistically draws a
comparison between the natural and imaginative world, the world of a nightingale. Saddened, he tries to seek comfort
and harmony in his imaginative world, but the pull of his consciousness brings him back to confront the heart-
wrenching realities of life. Ultimately, he realizes that only death can offer a permanent escape from pain. Disturbed
by the misfortune of his life, he wants the finest wine and his poetic imagination to throw away the horrific realities of
life. His desire to be drunk or unconscious shows that he does not remember his hardships and sufferings. However,
what enchants the reader is his flight of imagination that temporarily takes him away from the odds of life.
Analysis of Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pain
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being so happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows.
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild.
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 murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been.
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth.
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget.
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grow pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown.
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down.
The voice I hear this passing night was heard.
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick at home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam.
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! The very word is like a bell.
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well!
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: —do I wake or sleep?

The poem itself is very unhappy; Keats is stunned at the happiness of the bird, and despairs at the difference between
it and its happiness and his own unhappy life. At the start of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, the heavy sense of melancholy
draws allusions to Ode to Melancholy, and Keats – despite the death imagery – does not really want to die. The
conflicted nature of human life – a mixture of pain/joy, emotion/numbness, the actual/the ideal, etc. – dominates the
poem, so much so that, even at the end, it is unclear whether it happened – ‘do I wake or dream?’

It can also be assumed that the heavy imagery of death and sickness could hark back to his experiences taking care of
his elder brother, who died of tuberculosis under John Keats’ care. The unhappiness, however, that Keats feels in the
poem is not necessarily miserable – Keats writes that he has been ‘half in love with easeful Death’ and describes the
joy of listening to the nightingale’s song in a sort of euphoria. It can therefore be considered that Keats would rather
forget his unhappiness than die: the references to Hemlock, and Lethe, solidify this argument, as both would blur the
memory enough to allow Keats to forget.

There are heavy allusions to mythology: Lethe, the river of forgetting that flows through the underworld; Hippocrene,
the fountain of the Muses made by Pegasus’ hooves which brings inspiration; dryads, the spirit protectors of the forest;
Bacchus, god of wine and debauchery; Ruth and the corn-field is a reference to the book in the Bible; hemlock, the
poison that killed Socrates; Flora, the Roman goddess of nature.

Nature and imagination are shown to be a brief reprieve from human suffering, hence the song of the nightingale, and
its impressions. There is also a shi from reality to idealism: Keats says that he would like to drink from ‘a draught of
fine vintage’ (a very fine wine) and transport himself to the ideal world that the nightingale belongs to. He states that
he will not be taken there by Bacchus and his pards (Bacchanalia, revelry, and chaos) but by poetry and art. Keats then
goes on to describe his ideal world, making reference to the ‘Queen Moon’ and all her ‘starry-eyed Fay’ – however,
Keats cannot actually transport himself into this world, and the end of the nightingale’s song brings about the end of
his fantasy. ‘Country green’, ‘Provencal song’, and ‘sunburned mirth’ all point to a highly fantastical reality, especially
considering the status of the world at the time, and the mythological references help to maintain a surreal, dreamlike
state throughout the entire poem and to charge Keats’ fantasies with identifiable ideas and figures.

Keats uses the senses heavily in all his poetry, relying on synesthetic descriptions to draw the reader into ‘Ode to a
Nightingale’. It works especially well here because Keats’ fantasy world is dark and sensuous, and he ‘cannot see
what flowers are at my feet’; he is ‘in embalmed darkness’. The darkness may have helped his imagination to flourish
and furnish his ideal creation, as well as lending a supernatural air to ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
The drowsiness comes from the longing to flee the world and join the nightingale – to become like the nightingale,
beautiful and immortal and organic – and after rejecting joining the nightingale through Bacchanalian activity, he
decides that he will attempt to join the bird through poetry. Thus, the rapture of poetic inspiration matches the rapture
of the nightingale’s music and thereby links nature to poetry to art (nature as art and beauty, a romantic ideal). He calls
the bird ‘immortal’, thereby also stating that nature will survive man.

The bird’s song translates inspiration into something that the outside world can understand; like art, the nightingale’s
singing is changeable and renewable, and it is music that is ‘organic’, not made with a machine. It is art, but art that
cannot be viewed and has no physical form. As night shifts into the day – shifting from the supernatural back into fact
– the bird goes from being a bird to a symbol of art, happiness, freedom, and joy, back to being a bird. It is contrasted,
in the third stanza, by the reality of the world around him – sickness, ill health, and conflict.

The first half of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ represents the way man was – the pleasurable moments of life that overwhelm
and leave a gap behind when they’re over; the second half is maturity, and understanding truth, which leads to
pleasure but also leads to pain.

In the end, Keats realizes that merging with the ‘embalmed darkness’ means dying, giving himself up completely to
death, and becoming one of the worlds that he admires, however, it would mean that he can no longer hear the
nightingale and would be farther away from beauty. Neither life nor death is acceptable to Keats. He belongs nowhere.

Literary devices

1. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /the/ in
“That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees”.
2. Simile: A simile is a figure of speech used to compare something with something else to make its meaning
clear. Keats has used simile in the second stanza, “Forlorn! the very word is like a bell.” Here the poet is comparing
forlorn to a bell.
3. Enjambment: Enjambment refers to the continuation of a sentence without a pause after the end of a line in a
couplet or stanza. For example:
“My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.”
1. Imagery: The use of imagery makes the readers visualize the writer’s feelings, emotions, or ideas. Keats has
used images to present a clear and vivid picture of his miserable plight such as, “though of hemlock I had drunk,”,
“Past the near meadows,”, and “Fast fading violets covered up in leaves.”
2. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of the same vowel sounds in the same lines of poetry such as the
sound of /o/ in “In some melodious plot” and /i/ sound in “The voice I hear this passing night was heard.”
3. Metaphor: There are two metaphors in this poem. The first one is used in line eleven, “for a beaker full of the
warm south”. Here he compares liquid with the southern country weather.
4. Personification: Personification is to give human qualities to non-human things. Keats has used
personification in line twenty-nine, “where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes” as if the beauty is human and can
see. The second example is in line thirty-six, “The Queen moon is on her throne.”
5. Anaphora: It refers to the repetition of initial words of sentences in sequence or in the whole stanza or even
the poem. Keats has repeated the word “where” in the following lines to emphasize the existence of his imaginative
world. For example:
“Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grow pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.”
6. Apostrophe: An apostrophe is a device used to call somebody from afar. The poet has used this device in line
sixty-one, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird.”

Analysis of Poetic Devices

1. Stanza: Stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are eight stanzas in this poem with ten lines in each
stanza.
2. Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows ABABCDECDE throughout the poem with iambic pentameter.
3. End Rhyme: End Rhyme is used to make the stanza melodious in the first stanza the rhyming words are,
“pains”, “drains”, “drunk”, and “sunk.”
4. Internal Rhyme: Internal Rhyme is rhyme within a line such as in the line, “To toll me back from thee to my
sole self” Two words “me” and “thee” rhyme with each other.
5. Iambic Pentameter: It is a type of meter consisting of five iambs. The poem comprises iambic pentameter such
as, “My Heartaches, and a drowsy numbness pain.”
Characters
• The Nightingale
• The Speaker
Themes
• Versions of Reality
• Happiness
• Mortality
• Transience
• Man and the Natural World

Symbols
• Music and Musicians
• Nature
• The Ancient World
Motif
• Departures and Reveries
• The Five Senses and Art
• The Disappearance of the Poet and the Speaker

Conclusion
Ode to a Nightingale details Keats’s rumination on the nature of poetry, life, death, and immortality. The apparent
freedom and immortality of the bird are contrasted against the poet’s initial feelings of incarceration and hopelessness.
Keats’ melancholic disposition appears to be the accumulative effects of a life full of misery, maladies, and despair,
succeeded only by the inevitably of death. Therefore, the effect of the nightingale’s song, which figuratively offers the
embodiment and creation of poetry, is seen to present an antithetical promise of light within Keats’ darkness. The
nightingale’s mythical/magical position is promoted throughout most of the poem. It is variously linked with the
‘light-winged Dryad’, permitted to render a whole ‘plot’ ‘melodious’, and elevated via its correlation with ‘faery
lands’, ‘magic casements’, ‘emperors’, ‘clowns’ and ‘Ruth’. Numerous substitutes for the nightingale’s representation
of both inspiration and hope are first offered, then dismissed, before the nightingale and its powers are eventually
rejected in the last stanza when Keats acknowledges to himself that the ‘immortal Bird’ is no more than a ‘deceiving
elf.