What are the romantic elements in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

When one thinks of Romantic poetry, the first element that comes to mind is a focus on nature and a connection to nature. This is very clear in the poem as Keats focuses on the nightingale. With this focus, he includes numerous images connected to nature and the beauty of the natural world. This is especially noticeable in stanza 5, which is rich in sensory imagery:

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
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
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

Romantic poetry also includes descriptions of mythology and explorations into the realm of fantasy. Keats makes use of beautiful mythological references in the poem. Initially, his reference to the nightingale is to describe it as a “light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,” which compares it to a type of nymph from mythology. Later in the poem, he shares his desire to drink from the “blushful Hippocrene,” or sacred fountain of the muses on Mount Helicon, and in this way to “leave the world unseen, / And with thee fade away into the forest dim.”

This magical image of drifting away with the nightingale is enhanced by the Romantic image of the waters of the Hippocrene. Keats imagines filling his cup with this mythological water so that his cup has “beaded bubbles winking at the brim.” Note the personification of the bubbles “winking” and the playful use of alliteration in the line.

Personification of natural elements, such as the moon and stars, is also typical of Romantic poetry. Look at the following lines:

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays

Here the moon is personified as a royal queen on her throne surrounded by fairy stars. Note other examples of personification in the poem which are also typical of Romantic poetry, namely Beauty, Love and Death.

Primarily, the Romantic ideal to leave the pains and harsh realities of life are the focus of the poem. Note how Keats describes how sad and bleak life is where one suffers and essentially waits for death:

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;

He considers escaping this reality through wine or a “draught of vintage” or the “wings of Poesy.” Even death seems welcoming to the poet as he describes how he has “been half in love with easeful Death” as an alternative to the woeful reality. These desires for an idealized world away from the stark reality of suffering surrounding Keats is another prime example of romantic imagery.

The imagery surrounding "Poesy," which elaborates on its power to transport one from the present reality, is also found in Romantic poetry. The Romantic poets explored the merits and powers of poetry, beauty, love, and nature.

What are the romantic elements in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

In Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” as with many Romantic poems, a distinction is made between the real world and the world of the imagination, with the latter enjoying superiority. As a poet, and as a Romantic poet at that, Keats occupies a position somewhere between the two worlds—and it is the tension between them that forms the basis of “Ode to a Nightingale.”

Keats's heart aches for the eternal; he longs to join the nightingale in a realm of existence that will never die, never fade away, that very realm which is conjured up and explored by the imagination. This is the crucible in which, for the Romantic, the highest art is forged.

The speaker's overwhelming desire to live in the world of the imagination, as symbolized by the nightingale, is epitomized by the following lines:

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

But like everyone else he has to live in the real world too, the world of the ordinary and everyday. He knows that to inhabit the world of his imagination on a permanent basis is simply impossible. More than that, it is forlorn:

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Returning to his everyday self from his poetic reveries is all the more difficult for an arch-Romantic like Keats, as the world of the imagination seems more real to him than the mundane world we all inhabit for most of the time.

What elements of sensuousness are present in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" is full of sensuous details. In fact, it is the sensuousness of his imagery that makes him such a great poet. Here are some examples of that bountiful sensuous imagery:

O for a beaker full of the warm south,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;

The beaded bubbles winking at the brim are especially striking. We have all noticed this in a glass of red wine but needed Keats to call our attention to them. The little bubbles all cluster as if they are beaded together. They are iridescent and reflect the dark purple wine below them as well as the light that comes from above. Does anybody take the time to appreciate such tiny details anymore? Or do they all want to have read the poem and put it behind them? The beaded bubbles are in constant motion because they are so fragile. Not one of them can last for long. Each of them will pop. Keats uses the word "winking" to describe the effect perfectly. Each popped bubble is replaced by another bubble as if there are infinite bubbles eager to enjoy their moment of life and light. Keats may have spent a long time looking for those exact words to create the image.

But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

In his imagination the poet is close to the ground in bushes where nightingales nest. He imagines the faint light is blown through the shadows by the breezes. It is a supernatural kind of lighting effect known only to nightingales.

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.

Keats deviates from the dominant iambic pentameter with "Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves." This line has a syncopated effect. You can hear it if you read the line aloud. The big white musk-rose full of what Keats calls wine, and which is really a mixture of dew and the flower's own sweet-smelling nectar, evokes an image of a sort of quiet, dimly lighted pub where the flies gather in the evening to drink and converse. This is a fascinating, nearly hypnotic image—for anyone who will take the time to savor such things. F. Scott Fitzgerald must have loved Keats. Fitzgerald's prose is full of Keatsian-type description. He used the words "Tender is the night" as the title for his best novel.

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;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Those last two lines are spoken just before the poet is called back out of his fantasy into the grim world of reality. The lines represent his effort to express what cannot be expressed. They are the high point of the poem. The faery lands are "forlorn" because nobody believes in them anymore. It is the word "forlorn" that calls Keats back to reality against his will. Unlike the nightingale, he is not immortal. He died at the tender age of twenty-five, a tragic loss to English literature.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music—Do I wake or sleep?

Those are some examples of the sensuousness which is to be found in "Ode to a Nightingale" and in most of Keats' poetry. His "Ode to a Nightingale" is probably his greatest work.

What are two characteristics of Romanticism in John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"?

In the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats, the poet expresses a Romantic nostalgia for the past and alludes to it several times. He ties this in with ideas of beauty, joy, calm and pastoral scenery. In this, John keats appears to express an overpowering urge to run away into escapism. It is said that he wrote this poem in the early warmth of a spring time garden at a friend's house. It is also well known that Keats endured years of painful ill health and had to nurse and watch friends die through similar illnesses. it is little wonder then, given the prevalence of lung illnesses at the time, that he alludes to opiates and vacations. He longs to join the nightingale who will save him and draw him further away into the greenery of the wood.

What are two characteristics of Romanticism in John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"?

"Ode to a Nightingale" is an example of the romantic attachment to nature.  In just the first stanza, the speaker, as a result of the bird's singing, writes that his heart aches, and his senses are numb as though he's drank poison or used an opiate, not from envy, but because he is so happy for the bird's happiness. 

The poem also demonstrates the romantic attachment to a romanticized past.  Allusions abound:

• Lethe-wards--toward Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in Hades
• Dryad--a classical nymph
• Flora--goddess of flowers
• Hippocrene--classical fountain from which flowed inspiration

The romanticized past is used to describe the speaker's feelings and the nightingale itself.

What are the Romantic characteristics in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

The characteristics most often associated with the Romantic movement are a focus on intense emotion, the experience of the individual, and a glorification of nature. As soon as the poem begins, the speaker mentions that his "heart aches" and he wishes to feel somewhat numb; however, he spots a nightingale, a "light-winged Dryad of the trees." He wishes that he could drink the same nectar the nightingale drinks and, with it, "fade away into the forest dim." The speaker certainly glorifies the nightingale as well as the night in general, referring to the "Queen-Moon" and "her starry Fays." He praises the nightingale, suggesting that its song is immortal and has been heard by both the high and the low.

In the end, the speaker considers "lands forlorn" that may have been sweetened by the nightingale's song, and this word, forlorn, calls him back to himself and his own pain. He laments that imagination, or "fancy," cannot distract him for longer. The nightingale's song is gone now, and he cannot figure out if it was a dream or reality.

Here, then, we see an intensity of emotion when the narrator speaks of his overwhelming sadness. But this sadness is tempered by his imagination, which gives him some respite for a while as he contemplates the nightingale—a respite which is precisely what he'd hoped for early on in the poem. In his imagination, he conceives of the bird as a mystical nature spirit, glorifying nature in its entirety in the process.

What are the Romantic characteristics in "Ode to a Nightingale"?

One of the characteristics of Romanticism is a focus on the importance of nature. We certainly find this in "Ode to a Nightingale," as is seen in these lines:

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

The narrator's senses are fully engaged with nature, and he longs to know it more intimately. The descriptors convey a sense of peace and longing for the various forms nature takes as it envelops him.

Romantic literature also conveys an importance of one's imagination, and the narrator also displays this characteristic. He longs for a "draught of vintage" that might allow him to escape from reality and instead "leave the world unseen, / And...fade away into the forest dim." The speaker isn't focused on his reality but instead on what could be possible. He wishes to "fade...away" and "forget" the realities of life that lead to aging and illness and instead exist in a world where it is impossible to distinguish the waking world from the sleeping one.

The examination of emotions is also central to Romantic poetry. In this poem, the speaker gives voice to his inner fears. These same fears were central to Keats himself, who often spoke about his fear of dying young—which he unfortunately realized was his actual destiny. Keats longs to hold on to the beauties of youth in this poem. He doesn't want to succumb to "palsy" and "sorrow" which he sees in the faces of older men around him. Like the nightingale, he wants the song of his poetry to be heard for generations, transcending his own life. In a way, Keats longs for immortality through his emotional voice in this poem.

Although it was impossible for him to know these dreams would come to fruition, it is comforting to the reader to realize that Keats's dreams were realized and that it is therefore possible for people to have an impact that reaches beyond their physical time spent on Earth. That response hearkens to the roots of Romantic poetry, as well.

How is "Ode to a Nightingale" a Romantic poem?

"Ode to a Nightingale" is a Romantic poem in that it expresses a deep connection between the creative artist and nature. For Romantics like Keats, the natural world isn't just a collection of pretty objects; it is a living, breathing force in its own right, a vast organic whole of which we as humans are an intrinsic component.

In the poem, Keats tries to establish his connection to the natural world through the imagination, an especially vital faculty for Romantic artists. The imagination formed an essential part of the Romantic approach to life and art. It was seen as providing the artist with a means of penetrating to the deepest truths of existence. And it is through the imagination that Keats seeks to establish a connection with the nightingale, whose timeless sweet song has endured throughout history and will live on into eternity.

In the song of the nightingale we see another Romantic theme—that of the primacy of art over life. Historical epochs come and go, successive generations eventually die out, but art, as epitomized by the nightingale's song, will live forever, as it partakes of the eternal.