Ode to the Nightingale by John Keats
Channel: David Amster
Date: 2020-08-15

This poem is stunningly beautiful and so relevant to what we are experiencing today, especially the third stanza. 

I’m recording this poem in celebration of my friend Mostafa Ouajjani’s birthday. This is one of his favorite poems, and it is he who introduced me to the poem. It’s also in honor of Khadija Loummou, another lover of Keats’ poetry. I’m grateful to them, because my background in English poetry is quite limited and I wouldn’t have discovered such a jewel, if it hadn’t been for them. 

“In style and power the odes represent Keats’s finest poetry; indeed, they are among the greatest achievements of Romantic art.”

“Ode to a Nightingale begins not with a vision but with a dull, unexplained pain, not a pain at all but a vague “ache” of emptiness and “drowsy numbness.” Although we expect the bird’s joyful singing to inspire and regenerate the poet, it does not, or at least not in any simple way. Instead what follows is a troubled meditation, one of the richest and most compressed in English poetry, on the power of human imagination to meet joy in the world and transform the soul.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats

Vocabulary Notes (for learners of English, et alii):

Ode: a type of lyrical stanza. It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.

Hemlock: a drink made from a poison plant. Socrates was forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock. 

Lethe: the underworld river of oblivion and its goddess. The shades of the dead drank of its waters to forget their mortal lives.

Dryad: a tree nymph or tree spirit in Greek mythology. Drys signifies "oak" in Greek, and dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, but the term has come to be used for tree nymphs in general. 

Draught: a quantity of liquid (such as water, alcohol, or medicine) drunk in one swallow. 
Vintage: the wine made in a particular year.  

Flora: the goddess of flowers and the season of spring and the symbol for nature and flowers. 

Provençal: of Provence, a region of France. 

Hippocrene: in Greek Mythology Hippocrene was a spring sacred to the Muses; its water was supposed to bring forth poetic inspiration when imbibed. 

Palsy: paralysis, especially that which is accompanied by involuntary tremors.

Spectre: a ghost,phantom, apparition. 

Pine: to yearn intensely and persistently, especially for something unattainable. 

Pard: a leopard, the chariot of Bacchus, the god of wine, was drawn by leopards. 

Poesy: poetry

Fay: fairy 

Verdurous: filled with lush green vegetation.

Eglantine: A wild flowering plant, the dog rose.

Musk-rose: A rambling rose with large white musk-scented flowers.

Darkling: in the dark, in obscurity; dark, growing dark.  

Mused: carefully thought about for a long time, contemplated.

Sod: someone considered unpleasant, annoying, or difficult. 

Casement: a window or part of a window set on a hinge so that it opens like a door.

Forlorn: unhappy, desolate, pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely, hopeless.

Toll: with reference to a bell, to sound or cause to sound with a slow, uniform succession of strokes, as a signal or announcement; announce or mark the time.

Fancy: (originally from fantasy) the imagination, an image or representation of anything formed in the mind, the object of inclination or liking. 

Elf: a supernatural creature of folktales, typically represented as a small, elusive figure in human form with pointed ears, magical powers, and a capricious nature.