Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches
Explain how the song throws the poet into ecstasy, and why he wishes for wine.
John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' begins: 'My heart aches.' The poet feels a drowsy numbness, as if he had drunk hemlock or some drug, and was sinking towards Lethe, the river of forgetting in Greek myth.
But this is not from envy of the bird. It is because he is 'too happy' in the nightingale's happiness. His joy is so deep that it feels like pain.
The bird, a light-winged spirit of the trees (a 'Dryad'), sings of summer in some green, shady grove.
The poet longs for a drink of cool, old wine that tastes of flowers, country dance and song, and southern sunshine, and of Hippocrene, the fountain of poetry in Greek myth.
With it, he could leave the world unseen, and fade away with the bird into the dim forest.
Joy so deep that it feels like pain.
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