Ode to a Nightingale
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
Explain how the poet returns to despair, and identify oxymorons and appeals to the senses.
The word 'forlorn' (lonely and sad) rings like a bell, and calls the poet back from the bird to his 'sole self', his ordinary, lonely self.
Fancy, his imagination, cannot cheat him for long. The song fades away, over the meadows, the stream and the hill, until it is buried in the next valley.
He is left unsure: was it a vision, or a waking dream? The music has fled. Does he wake, or sleep?
Keats often uses oxymoron, joining opposites, such as a numbness that pains, or a waking dream, to show his mixed state of mind.
An ode is a long poem that speaks to its subject, here the nightingale. Keats' ode appeals to the senses of sound, sight and taste, and is rich in adjectives.
Happiness slips away, like a fading song.
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