What is the theme of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"?

The main theme of "Ode to a Nightingale" is negative capability and its power to aid the speaker in his transcendence of mortal pain and grief. 

Negative capability was a term coined by Keats himself. It refers to how a poet can disregard (or negate) how they think and feel, thus being able to write entirely from their subject's perspective. For instance, in "Ode to a Nightingale," the speaker goes along with the poem's titular bird as if he is the nightingale itself. The especially vivid and striking descriptions of the forest and night in stanzas four through six exemplify how the speaker is negating himself in favor of being one with the nightingale--stanza four even starts the speaker's journey as he exclaims, "Away! away! for I will fly to thee."

However, before the speaker takes us to his feathered subject, he speaks of how harsh this world is. He proclaims that he wishes he could get drunk to forget his ills and then "with thee [the nightingale] fade away." In stanza three he goes into further detail about how awful human existence and mortal pain are:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Yet, while the speaker is looking at the world through the Nightingale's eyes, he is content with the dark forest and sweet smells of flowers and foliage. He is able to forget mortal pain because nightingales do not know the pain of humankind. The nightingale "wast not born for death," and therefore it must not suffer through heartache, disease, and aging as humans do. The speaker feels so free of grief and detached from reality that, when the bird flays away and its song fades, the speaker must ask himself:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music—Do I wake or sleep?

Envisioning himself as a bird that was incapable of sorrow negated the speaker's personal anguish to the point where he was not sure weather his respite from agony was actually real or just a dream.

Thus, there are several themes within this poem, but escape from reality (and the associated pain of life) through the power of one's imagination is most definitely the most predominant theme.

What is the meaning of these lines from "Ode to a Nightingale"?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path...

As with any question that asks you to explain a certain part of a text or a poem, it is vital that you have a look at this excerpt within the context of the poem as a whole and not just try to guess at the meaning by looking at these lines in isolation. What is key to these lines is the way that they clearly point towards the nightingale being a symbol of the eternal beauty of nature and enduring art that makes it so separate from the experience of the speaker. The speaker says that the nightingale was not "born for death" and that there are no "hungry generations" who are trying to "tread thee down." Before these lines, the speaker has dwelled on the way that life for humans is characterised by suffering and pain. Focusing on the nightingale, the speaker now sees that this bird, and what it stands for, is free from this experience of suffering. The beauty of the nightingale's song is something that has endured throughout the ages, as it was heard "in ancient days by emperor and clown." Art and beauty, like the nightingale's song, is therefore something that endures the test of time in a way that humans cannot, but also penetrates every social sphere, both the great of the world (the emperors) as well as the foolish (the clowns).

What is the critical appreciation of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"?

“Ode to a Nightingale” (1819) is a Horatian Ode written primarily in iambic pentameter. The poem, composed after John Keats heard a nightingale outside his window, is a consideration of death, the apprehension of material beauty and the fascination of a world of deterioration. Keats was greatly admired in the Romantic poetic circle and “Ode to a Nightingale” stands as one of his most famous poems. Perhaps this is, in part, because the poem’s central figure, the nightingale, remains elusive and ambiguous. For instance, the line “ Already with thee!” in the fourth stanza signals, to many critics, that the poet has entered a trance. This is particularly interesting because Keats was not known to take mind altering drugs, for instance opium, like other Romantic poets such as his contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ambiguous language, such as found in this line, contributes to the poem’s universal appeal and allows modern readers to connect to the themes and motifs of the work. It is also noteworthy to consider how “Ode to a Nightingale” continues themes of subjectivity and self-consciousness that are found in his other works, such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or “To Autumn.” In these poems, specifically in “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats elaborates on the power of the imagination to escape ordinary, and often painful, reality. For instance, in the sixth stanza Keats writes:

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod.

This stanza exemplifies the power Keats places on the imagination. As the speaker listens to the bird, he escapes thoughts of “easeful death” which lure him to death. As the speaker considers what death might feel like, he hears the bird “pouring forth” his soul “In such an ecstasy!” Here, the narrator longs for death. Yet, in the final two stanzas, the narrator realizes that death would mean an end to the nightingale’s song, which he interprets as the end of art in nature. As the poem continues, the poet becomes less enchanted with the bird, who many critics interpret as a symbol of immortality. Ultimately, the nightingale represents flight and escape from reality; a symbol that Keats ultimately rejects.

What is the poet conveying in these lines from "Ode to a Nightingale"?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn

Keats is stating that, in his opinion, nightingales have been alive and present throughout human history. "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!" He is supporting this opinion with various theories or demonstrations of a nightingale's presence at places and times in the past.

Keats suggests that the call of a nightingale was heard "in ancient days by emperor," implying that nightingales had lived in the Roman Empire and other long-ago empires.

He refers to Ruth, the Biblical Moabite widow who follows her widowed mother-in-law back to the mother-in-law's homeland near Bethlehem, harvests "the alien corn" from the fields to allow them to live, and eventually remarries and becomes the great-grandmother of King David, the greatest of the Israelite kings.

Keats places the call of the nightingale throughout the world of fantasy, referring to "magic casements" and "faery lands."

Critically analyze "Ode to a Nightingale" as a representative ode of Keats.

I suppose one of the ways we can answer this question is by looking at the content and the themes of this excellent ode. There are clear thematic links between this ode and other odes by Keats, such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn," with their focus on beauty and the way that beauty is linked to human suffering. In both poems, we have two symbols that are used to represent beauty, in the nightingale and the Grecian urn. Likewise, both poems focus on artistic talent and the way that creating beauty can help free us from our earthly sufferings. However, simultaneously, we have the bitter-sweet recognition that the appreciation of beauty and its eternal nature only serves to remind us of how transitory we are as humans, and how we must accept our own mortality and the way that suffering and death will claim us sooner or later.

Write the critical appreciation of the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by the poet John Keats.

Much like other Romantic poets, John Keats seeks solace in his poetry. His ode, or elaborate lyric poem expressive of exalted emotion, addresses the solace and transience of nature, along with mortality. With his address to the nightingale, Keats enters what Romantics termed the state of Negative Capability,

the human capacity to transcend every given context by negating it in thought or deed.

Negative capability describes the ability of the individual to perceive, think, and operate beyond confining social contexts.

When the poet hears the nightingale singing, he is at first filled with ambivalent feelings. Addressing the bird as is customary in an ode, the poet appreciates the beauty of the bird and its enthusiastic song celebrating life; however, at the same  time, he is preoccupied with his moribund state,

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,

It is in Stanza 4 that Keats initiates the state of Negative Capability:  If he cannot transcend mortality by creating flight in the fancy of imagination--even to the point of having the reader accompany him in this transience.  It is here that Keats achieves what is quintessentially Romantic.  However, he is unable to sustain this apex of romantic imagination as his imminent mortality intrudes,

 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows

Then, in Stanza 6, the poet declares that, after all, he has been "half in love with easeful Death" as he has hoped for surcease from his agonizing pain; for, it seems "rich to die" accompanied by the "high requiem of the bird. Thus, a sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, even the moribund.

Then, in the final stanzas, Keats addresses the bird as "Immortal Bird" in a quasi-religious experience that leaves the poet puzzled about whether he has been awake or sleeping. Nevertheless, Keats continues the conceit, an extended metaphor of the nightingale being an immortal bird that has passed through the ages.

Among the poetic devices that Keats employs is dazzling imagery; in fact the imagery is so exquisite that the reader is entranced by it.  One such example of this magnificent imagery is from Stanza 5:

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Indeed, Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is truly a transcendental experience.

What societal commentary does John Keats make in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

I wouldn't interpret this poem as Keats making any particular kind of comment on society as a whole. He is not writing in response to any particular social change. Rather, he is lamenting the vicissitudes of life in general, and is doing so from the point of view of someone, it is widely believed, who was suffering from acute depression. Indeed, Keats's sentiments in this poem draw towards the suicidal: he has "been half in love with easeful Death" for some time, and envies the nightingale, who does not suffer either the speaker's difficulties or his troubled thoughts.

The "drowsy numbness" which pains the speaker and causes his heart to ache is not ascribed to any particular social issue, but rather has arisen because the speaker is so envious of the bird, whose "happy lot" seems so far outside the speaker's experience. The bird, like a "Dryad of the trees," soars, both literally and symbolically, above the speaker's cares.

The speaker yearns for some kind of draught in which the good feelings he half-remembers could be contained: "a beaker full of the warm South" which would allow him to "fade away into the forest dim." He yearns to leave his life and achieve a new existence with the nightingale, free of "the weariness, the fever and the fret" which form such a part of the speaker's own existence.

Keats certainly had much to be concerned about in his own life at the time of writing. He suffered from tuberculosis, an illness which would eventually end his life. His brother also succumbed to tuberculosis—this is alluded to in this poem, when the speaker laments how "youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies." Keats was also unable to marry the love of his life because of insufficient funds to support her. As such, he has reason to interpret life as simply a state in which "men sit and hear each other groan," beset by "palsy" and early death. It is unsurprising that the difficulties of Keats's own existence have forced him into a position where "but to think is to be full of sorrow" and where "there is no light."

In the nightingale, the speaker sees a "light" which is unreachable on earth, or at least of which he cannot conceive in his extremely depressed mindset.

Broadly discus the critical appreciation of "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats.

The central theme of this famous poem is the profound beauty of nature and the pain that is evoked when Keats thinks about his own mortality and the way that he will have to lave it. Keats manages to capture feelings that are therefore part of the universal human experience and, when he describes the nightingale as a "light-winged Dryad of the trees" singing in "full-throated ease," he is able to evoke the beauty of nature through the words that he chooses.

You might find it interesting to consider some autobiographical details of Keats in relation to this poem. He wrote it when he was experiencing great mental turmoil due to the death of his brother from tuberculosis. Keats was beginning to suspect that he had the same disease, and he was also facing other personal difficulties. We can therefore understand the longing for death that is expressed in these lines:

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

to take into the air my quiet breath...

This helps give this poem its rather bittersweet tone, as it combines and juxtaposes the beauty of nature and ideas of the eternal with the grim realities of decay and death that are faced by humanity. Whilst Keats is enraptured by his vision of the nightingale and how it represents eternal beauty, at the same time, at the end of the poem, he is forced to return to earth from his reverie to embrace precisely the harshness of life that his meditation on the nightingale has enabled him to escape. Although his reverie has allowed Keats to transcend his earthly and mortal limitations, this is only temporary, and perhaps the final question posed in the poem, "Do I wake or sleep?", indicates the way in which Keats finds the return to reality so challenging.