Ode to a Nightingale Themes

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the poem leaves the "normal" world, because the speaker's version of "normal" involves acting like he's on the drug opium. But by the fourth stanza it has become...

Is "happiness" or "unhappiness" a more appropriate theme for "Ode to a Nightingale"? We're not sure. The speaker is mighty unhappy about the demands placed on him by life, time, and age. He hates t...

The speaker of "Ode to a Nightingale" fools himself into believing that the nightingale is immortal, or at least its song is. But this statement seems only to give him another excuse to complain ab...

The fleeting nature of happiness and youth is one of the great themes in Keats's Great Odes. In the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," for example, he becomes envious of the people depicted on an old pot, bec...

The speaker of "Ode to a Nightingale" loves nature, but he can't get on board with the whole natural-things-have-to-die-sometime thing. He even fancies that the nightingale is some immortal, godlik...