Monday, November 25, 2013

Please comment upon the following lines from "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats.White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets...

You have quoted the second half of the fifth stanza and
the first half of the sixth stanza of this famous poem. As always with these kinds of
questions you need to be very careful that you look at any quotes you take from it in
context of the stanzas that they come from and the poem as a
whole.


Having said this, your quote begins by a description
that paints a picture of the sensuous beauty of nature that surrounds the poet as he
speaks. We are given images that deliberately appeal to our senses, as we can smell the
"coming musk rose, full of dewy wine" and also hear the "murmurous haunt of flies" as
they buzz around. The setting therefore seems to be entirely approrpiate for the speaker
to engage on his flight of fancy as he considers the nature of beauty in the form of the
nightingale.


The opening of the sixth stanza however
creates a very different mood from the kind of natural beauty presented in the stanza
immediately before. Instead of focusing on the beauty of his surroundings, the poet
describes his own world-weary state and how he has yearned for death at times, being
"half in love with easeful Death," seeing death as a release and an escape from the
wearisome problems of the world that he suffers. Note how the mood of this section
becomes morose, dispirited and passive as he contemplates dying.

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