Ode to a Nightingale
Thou wast not born for death
Describe what the poet wants to escape and how he shows the song is immortal.
The poet wants to forget what the bird has never known: the weariness, the fever and the fret (worry) of human life.
In our world, he says, people sit and hear each other groan; the old shake with palsy; the young grow pale and thin, and die; and just to think is to be full of sorrow.
Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes for long, and new love cannot last beyond tomorrow.
But the nightingale, he cries, was not born for death. No hungry generations tread it down. Individual birds die, but the song goes on.
The same song he hears tonight was heard long ago by emperors and clowns; perhaps by Ruth, in the Bible, homesick and in tears among the alien corn; and in magic, faraway faery lands.
Human life fades; the nightingale's song goes on.
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