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“Ode to a Nightingale” consists of eight ten-line stanzas, each of which is written in iambic pentameter. (Recall that this metrical form features five iambs per line, where an iamb consists of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, as in the word “to-day.”) Iambic pentameter was arguably the most common meter of Keats’s day. It was popular among poets because it could approximate the cadences of natural speech without lapsing too much into the lilting rhythms common in songs. The five-beat line had an intrinsically noble sound that served particularly well in poems with serious subject matter. Hence, it was the preferred verse for epic poems like John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which Keats himself admired tremendously. Yet despite his relatively regular use of iambic pentameter in this poem, Keats also introduces a great deal of metrical variability within each stanza. One form of metrical variability is consistent throughout the poem: the eighth line of each stanza is written not in pentameter but in trimeter, which has three feet instead of five. The other form of metrical variability shifts from line to line and involves the substitution of individual iambs for other feet with alternative rhythmic patterns.

To get a sense for the effect of this variability, let’s analyze the meter of the poem’s opening stanza (lines 1–10):

     My heart / aches, and / a drow- / sy numb- / ness pains
              My sense, / as though / of hem- / lock I / had drunk,
     Or emp- / tied some / dull op- / iate to / the drains
              One min- / ute past, / and Le- / the-wards / had sunk:    
     'Tis not / through en- / vy of / thy hap- / py lot,
              But be- / ing too hap- / py in / thine hap- / pi-ness,—
                     That thou, / light-wing- / ed Dry- / ad of / the trees
                             In some / me-lod- / i-ous plot
              Of beech- / en green, / and shad- / ows num- / ber-less,
                     Sing-est / of sum- / mer in / full-throat- / ed ease.

Although the overall rhythm is clearly iambic, Keats sometimes forces the rhythm through the elision of vowel sounds, as in line 2, where the three-syllable word “op-i-ate” become the two-syllable “op-iate.” Keats also inserts many metrical substitutions. The first substitution appears already in the second foot of the opening line, where the initial emphasis on “aches” creates a trochee (stressed–unstressed). Additional trochee substitutions appear in the second foot of line 7 (“light-wing-”) and the first foot of line 10 (“Sing-est”). Another type of metrical substitution appears in the second foot of line 6, where he introduces a three-beat anapest (unstressed–unstressed–stressed): “But be- / ing too hap- / py in.” Yet another comes in the penultimate foot of line 10, where Keats features a spondee (stressed–stressed): “full-throat- / ed ease.” Taken together, these and other metrical substitutions in the poem give the language more texture and increased dynamic range. Alongside the liberal assonance and consonance in the poem, the metrical variation contributes to the overall sumptuousness of the speaker’s speech.

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