Sounds of Keats, the Sounds Term Paper

In other words, by crying out to heaven, and speaking to the bird in the language of emotions and mythology, the Nightingale comes to speak for the poet's own heart and poetic persona, as the poet himself is heard speaking during the poem in open-mouthed cries that stress vowels rather than sharper consonant sounds. (Lancashire, 2002)

In this ode, Keats always focuses on immediate, concrete sensations rather than upon clever wordplay. The driving sense of the poem is its expression of the poetic emotions, "from which the reader can draw a conclusion" about the poet's "ambivalent response," to the joy and relief he feels at the sight of bird that reminds him of his own perceived inner ugliness. (Melani, 2002) In stanza four, this sense of the concrete comes to the forefront as the poet Keats moves from calling to heaven then to suddenly crying out to the bird itself. But mixed in with the concrete image of flight there is also a sounded sense of fantasy, for as Keats shouts "Away! away!" To the bird, these thoughts are next followed with a direct address, telling the creature, "for I will fly to thee."

At the end Keats announces, clearly aloud and yet clearly in an imaginary but desiring way he is going to use "the viewless wings of Poesy" to join this fantasy bird.

Thus "Ode to a Nightingale," although it seems cerebral in its classical allusions and symbolic use of a strange animal, is a poem of the emotions, a personal and gut-wrenching cry, rather than a reflective work of verse.It reflects not upon the Nightingale as a being in and of itself, but uses sound to express what the Nightingale signifies about what lies within Keats own breast, as he cries out to it, across the garden to the tree where it perches.

Works Cited

Keats, John. "Ode to a Nightingale." From The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Introduction by Michael Myers. Sixth Edition, St. Martin's Press, 2002.

Lancashire, Ian. "Commentary: Ode to a Nightingale." University of Toronto. Last updated September 9, 2002. http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1131.html

Melani, C. "Keats Ode." Department of English at CUNY Homepage. Last Updated 2003. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/nighting.html

Wullschlager, Anne; John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale": An Easy Publication for a Difficult End. http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/images/external-link.png http://www.clayfox.com/ashessparks/reports/anne.html.....