Ode to a Nightingale

This poem is about escape, through the transitory nature of a nightingale's song or through poetry. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker's "heart aches," and he is numb as if he had taken a drug. He wishes for an escape through alcohol. He wants to "fade far away" and forget the pain the nightingale "hast never known." He decides instead to fly to the nightingale not with alcohol "but on the viewless wings of Poesy." Poetry has no boundaries for him, it is viewless. He creates for himself an escape from his troubles by writing poetry. In his imaginings of being with the nightingale out at night, or his imaginings while he is writing poetry, he abandons his sense of sight, "I cannot see," and instead "I listen." Poetry makes himi aware of the world in a different way. In musing about the escape through poetry, he muses about another escape, death. Listening to the bird's song, "now more than ever seems it rich to die." Yet if he died, he would not be able to hear the bird's continued song. Death provides a permanent escape, but it seems he would rather keep listening to the bird's song, or keep writing. He is commenting on the transience of human life and how nature and poetry survive it. The voice of poetry and the nightingale has been heard through the generations. Still, the thought of one word "forlorn," brings him back to reality. He is forlorn, not the nightingale because it will never know his pains, so he immediately is brought back to himself. The act of creatively expressing oneself is transitory. The bird's song is fleeting, it is a temporary escape for him just as writing his poetry can only be a temporary escape from life. He wonders if he is awake or asleep by the end, showing how his creative expression can change his perceptions of the world around him.