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Moments of Fantasy

The speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale” frequently indulges in moments of fantasy as a way of avoiding their negative thoughts about suffering and death. The first moment of fantasy occurs in the second stanza, where the speaker, inspired by Greek mythology, falls into an idyllic pastoral reverie about wine. Then, after an intervening stanza in which the speaker discusses the inherent pain of life and the inevitability of death, they offer up another fantastical vision inspired by the nightingale’s song (lines 35–37):

     Already with thee! tender is the night,
              And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
                     Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays

The light from the moon and stars is extremely faint, and the speaker can’t see much at all. Even so, they engage in another kind of fantasy in stanza 5, where they attend to their other senses and speculate at length about the beautiful flowers that must surround them. Finally, in stanza 7, the speaker returns with one last moment of fantasy (lines 68–70):

                             The same that oft-times hath
              Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
                     Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

These lines come on the heels of the speaker’s assertion that the nightingale is made immortal through its song, which has been heard throughout all human history. Here they go further, insisting that the song may also be heard even in parallel worlds, including in “faery lands.”

Shadow and Darkness

The speaker associates the nightingale’s song with “summer” (line 10) and that season’s “sunburnt mirth” (line 14). Yet far more prevalent in the poem are the speaker’s references to darkness. In one sense, these references function to establish the poem’s nighttime scene. Hence why the speaker mentions “shadows numberless” (line 9) and later explains that they “cannot see” (41) in the “embalmed darkness” (43). In another sense, though, the references to darkness emphasize the speaker’s gloomy mood. Thus, when the speaker says, “Darkling I listen” (line 51), they mean both that they are listening in darkness, but also that the darkness has infiltrated the very way they are listening. Put differently, the speaker’s dark frame of mind has cast a pall on everything, such that they see the world as a place “where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes” (line 29). All things “lustrous” grow dim on this earthly plane of existence, where, as the speaker says in lines 38–40:

                      there is no light,
              Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
                     Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

No light means no illumination, no sight—and, hence, no hope.

References to Intoxication

The speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale” makes numerous references to intoxication. They open the poem already in an altered state, claiming to feel “a drowsy numbness” (line 1). They initially liken this state to that produced by the poisonous herb known as “hemlock” (line 2), but then they compare it to the more sedating effect of “some dull opiate” (line 3). Either way, they feel deadened, as though sinking “Lethe-wards” (line 4)—that is, into the mythical river of forgetfulness. The speaker then spends the second stanza seeking further oblivion at the bottom of a wine glass. They open with the cry: “O, for a draught of vintage!” (line 11). Some lines later, they repeat the expostulatory “O” and revel in their desire for alcohol (lines 15–20):

     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-stained mouth;
              That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
                     And with thee fade away into the forest dim

Though the desire to “fade away” stays with the speaker, they eventually relinquish their thirst for chemical intoxicants. Instead, they seek out a more abstract type of intoxication made possible by “the viewless wings of Poesy” (line 33). With these and other references to intoxication and oblivion, the speaker seeks escape from the pain suffering of the world.

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