What type of ode is ode to a nightingale

Fays — Another word for fairies, a major contributor to the supernatural elements of the Romantic time period and a common inclusion in writing of this time. This is seen throughout the ode, as apostrophe, the practice of evoking something, begins several of the stanzas.

The meter used in each line of every stanza is written in iambic pentameter, except for the eighth line of each stanza, which is written in iambic trimeter. Each additional stanza after the first follows the same rhyme scheme, however different rhyming words are used. Stephen Greenblatt and M. New York: W.

Image Credits Not In Captions: 1. Hemlock 2. Lethe — One of five rivers in Hades, also called Ameles potamos river of unmindfulness ; drinking its waters causes forgetfulness River Lethe Illustration 3. Dryad — Tree nymph in Greek mythology female spirit associated with a particular place Dryad 4.

Goddess Flora 5. Provence 6. Fountain 7. Tuberculosis Effects 8. Dionysus Bacchus 9. Fays Dancing The poem opens immediately with a somber tone and with references to the lethal hemlock, contributing to the overtones of death. Death is even personified and directly addressed in the sixth stanza. Immortality — It is ironic that a poem so filled with tones of death also features a theme of immortality.

The first hint at it is in the first stanza with the mention of the Lethe River. His second volume of poetry had been harshly reviewed. He had no gainful occupation and no prospects, since he had abandoned his medical studies. His financial condition was insecure. He had not been well in the fall and winter of and possibly he was already suffering from tuberculosis. He could not marry Fanny Brawne because he was not in a position to support her. Thus the death-wish in the ode may be a reaction to a multitude of troubles and frustrations, all of which were still with him.

The heavy weight of life pressing down on him forced "Ode to a Nightingale" out of him. Keats more than once expressed a desire for "easeful Death," yet when he was in the final stages of tuberculosis he fought against death by going to Italy where he hoped the climate would cure him.

The death-wish in the ode is a passing but recurrent attitude toward a life that was unsatisfactory in so many ways. The third main thought in the ode is the power of imagination or fancy. Keats does not make any clear-cut distinction between the two. In the ode Keats rejects wine for poetry, the product of imagination, as a means of identifying his existence with that of the happy nightingale.

But poetry does not work the way it is supposed to. He soon finds himself back with his everyday, trouble-filled self. The imagination is not the all-powerful function Keats, at times, thought it was. It cannot give more than a temporary escape from the cares of life. Keats' assignment of immortality to the nightingale in stanza VII has caused readers much trouble.

Keats perhaps was thinking of a literal nightingale; more likely, however, he was thinking of the nightingale as a symbol of poetry, which has a permanence. Keats' evocative power is shown especially in stanza II where he associates a beaker of wine "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim," with sunny France and the "sunburnt mirth" of the harvesters, and in his picture in stanza VII of Ruth suffering from homesickness "amid the alien corn.

Previous "Ode on Melancholy". In general, a Horatian ode has a consistent stanza length and meter, while other kinds of odes do not — but we don't need to get too far into the weeds here. Suffice it to say that this poem might be the most famous representative of the ode form as a whole.

The poem has eight separate stanzas of ten lines each, and the meter of each line in the stanza, except for the eighth, is iambic pentameter. The eighth line is written in iambic trimeter ahh!

Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English. For example, check out line 2: My sense , as though of hem -lock I had drunk Keats does an excellent job of keeping the meter pretty regular through the poem, without making it sound awkward or strained.