Analysis Of John Keats Ode To A Nightingale

Andrew Kappel argues in his essay, “The Immortality of the Natural: Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’”, that the basis of the nightingale’s immortality in John Keats’s, “Ode to a Nightingale” is its naturalness meaning that, the nightingale escapes death because it exists among nature. The bird is referred to as being immortal throughout the poem including in line 61, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”. Kappel does have evidence to support his claim such as, Keats’s use of keeping the bird in a constant natural setting saying, “As it withdraws it moves from one natural setting to another, never ventures outside nature and seems, indeed to retreat ever more deeply into the natural world.” Constantly keeping the bird in a natural setting

He confides to the reader that he, “have been half in love with easeful Death, call 'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme”. Death was personified in order to portray the speaker’s feelings towards death as a sort of love story and therefore, demonstrate the intensity of the desire for death that the speaker has. However, the speaker experiences an epiphany that he does not want to die when he comes to the realization that he won’t be able to hear the nightingale’s song in death. He states that he wouldn’t be alive, “While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain”. Although the song doesn’t provide the speaker with immortality, it is the sole purpose the speaker finds that gives him the will to live again. This demonstrates that the song is a powerful force capable of leading an individual away from death. Had the speaker overcame his suicidal thoughts due to his inability to imagine not being able to see nature in death, Kappel’s claim would have been held however, it is only the nightingale’s song that gives the speaker the will to

This is demonstrated in the allusion to Ruth in lines 65-67, “Perhaps the self-same song that found a path through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn”, which is reference to the Book of Ruth of the Old Testament. The story details Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi, after the death of Ruth’s husband. Ruth decides to stay with her mother-in-law in order to support her by working in the fields hence why Keats says, “she stood in tears amid the alien corn”. When the speaker says, “Perhaps the self-same song that found a path through the sad heart of Ruth”, he means that the nightingale’s song is the song that Ruth listened to centuries ago therefore, conveying that it is the song that has lasted throughout ages and gave strength to Ruth to survive like it did for the speaker previously. Again, the birds song is shown as immortal in lines 63-64, “The voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown”. The nightingale’s song is the one being emphasized as being eternal and heard in ancient times by everyone hence why the speaker says that it was heard by the most powerful, the emperor, all the way to the most powerless, the