Ode To Night

476 Words2 Pages
John Keats' “Ode to Nightingale” give off the sense that death is nothing more than just falling into an eternal sleep. “My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk/Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains/One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.” (p.213,lines.2-4) These lines in the first stanza allow us to see that Keats is depress and he make the allusion in line 4 to Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in the Hades of Greek Mythology. Who ever drink from the river of forgetfulness would simply forget everything. Another sign of his depression would be in line 2. He describe his loss of sense due to the poison he had drunk and the opium that is already dulling his senses. “That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,” (line 7). Light-winged Dryad referred to the nightingale and Dryad is the Greek mythology nymph. When Keats combine both the nightingale and the nymph together, we could get the sense that he is in the surreal state of reality and dreams, that he wants to forget the reality and enter his beautifully alluded dream state where nymphs would sing and dance. We can make the connection of his depression from his poems with the occurrences in his life. At an early age, Keats' father died after falling off of his horse on the way home from visiting Keats' at school. This could cause him a great deal of pain. Not only was Keats too young to be experiencing the loss of a parent but he could also blame himself on this great loss. At the age of 14, Keats' mother passed away. Losing both parents within the span of 6 years at such an early age would throw anyone in to such despair. The allusion of the river Lethe really coincide with the theme of the poem as a whole. Keats want to listen to the song of the nightingale and forget everything. Keats' writing career was never an easy one. Many never accepted his writing due to his style that didn't fit with the
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