Ode to the Nightingale

Poetry is a highly expressive art form in which authors have the power to portray their feelings with the use of literary devices such as diction, imagery, and tone. The majority of poetic pieces experience shifts and changes to depict the poet’s respective emotions. As the narrator’s response in John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” shifts throughout the poem through the use of carefully crafted imagery, allusions, diction, and tone, the narrator compares his own life to that of the nightingale.

        The song of the nightingale falls upon the listening ear of the narrator who is moved to feel pain as though he had been poisoned with the very same herb that put to death the great greek philosopher, Socrates, or pleasure as if he had ingested some “dull opiate.” The imagery within the first stanza and the author's allusion to hemlock portrays the narrator’s heart felt response to the intoxicating song of the nightingale.  The narrator’s description of “country green” and village dances show his wish to be a part of the never-ending life and happiness he believes the nightingale to be a part of in his imagination.