Finally he fears that he will never find true love: “and when I feel fair creature of the hour, that I shall never look upon thee more, never have relish in the faery power of unreflecting love!”. The use of the exclamation mark shows that this is probably Keats’ largest fear despite his supposed mistrust for women and this gives an interesting insight into his personality. He thinks of love as being the ultimate goal in life and is scared that he will never look upon it.
A main theme within these two poems is that of conflict. ‘Ode To a Nightingale’ shows his conflict between mortality and immortality, between life and death and between transience and transcendence. ‘When I Have Fears’ similarly explores the inconsistencies in Keats mind.
Throughout ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ Keats uses the nightingale as a metaphor of constancy and also as a symbol of transcendence, immortality, youthfulness, beauty and art. This contrasts greatly with the suffering that he has to endure constantly, and the poem shows his longing for a quick and easy death so he can be like the nightingale and flee from the transience of human mortality - lose the very thing that makes him suffer. At first Keats describes the drug-like effect that the nightingale’s song has had on him and the pain from his illness: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains”. This sets the scene for the emotional imagery that Keats uses and allows him to explore deeper into his thoughts and feelings. It also prepares the reader for the inconsistencies that Keats will have to delve into within his thoughts. He is eternally yearning for a different life before returning to reality to face his current position.
He describes the immortality of the nightingale and gives the best example throughout the poem of the nightingale being seen as a symbol of constancy: “thou was not born for death immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down”. He also writes about the wonder of the nightingale’s song and how it juxtaposes both worlds. The nightingale is also described as resilient to all illnesses and is obviously a creature that Keats particularly loved and admired. Overall this stanza shows that the nightingale is free from all restraints and the ongoing change of the physical world, producing a powerful image in the process. Through using the metaphor of the eternal bird in comparison to the painful mortality of the transient world the internal conflict within Keats is explored, ending on him being drawn back to his ‘sole self’ possibly suggesting that the Nightingales fancy cannot delude him any more.
Conflict within Keats is similarly explored in ‘When I Have Fears’. The metaphor of the Nightingale is replaced by the metaphor of a shore. His feelings about himself and his own aspirations, dreams and achievements are explored in the first three stanzas. However a turning point is then seen: ‘then on the shore of the wide world I stand alone’. A shore is a line on which two worlds meet. Water and land come together, the boundaries constantly in flux, changing and ebbing in and out depending on seasons, on times and on change. This is perhaps a metaphor for Keats’ own personal feelings and the point in which he crosses from one state of thought into another. He describes himself to be standing on the shore teetering between one state and the other.
The state described at the end of the poem shows a change in his thoughts: ‘and think / Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.’ He realises that perhaps his own dreams and aspirations are insignificant compared to the expanse of the world and dismisses his own needs in a sense of awe for the sheer beauty of nature and being. Perhaps because of his melancholy this is why Keats finally sees himself as insignificant and his thoughts futile.
The conflict shown in this poem is one of significance. The significance of his thoughts when compared to the natural world – his desires for fame and worries about not achieving it are unimportant when compared to the vastness of life. In ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ he is in conflict between both the beauty and despair that life can bring and the feeling that it would be ‘rich to die’ but, alternatively, that he would be unable to appreciate beauty if he was so and be unable to experience the ‘ecstasy’ of the nightingale’s ‘high requiem’.
Both poems contain extensive use of pastoral and naturalistic imagery, rich luscious language, assonance, alliteration, metaphors and other devices. The language used in both is very typical of the Romantic era – a language that emotively tries to seek out truth, beauty and romance through its rich sensual ness and vivid pictorial forms. In both, language is used to emphasise the conflicts within Keats.
In ‘Ode To A Nightingale warm, living visual imagery is used mould the vision of Keats’ yearning. Pastoral images, of “earth” and “country green”, and of ‘some melodious plot of beechen green’ are used with the idea of intoxication that runs throughout the poem.
He describes nature and compares it to his own life because it is always changing, but he keeps the underlying theme of darkness. This means that Keats is forced to imagine the world and by doing so he uses clever synaesthesia to describe all the senses: “fast fading violets covered up in leaves; and mid-May’s eldest child, the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmourous haunt of flies on summer eves”. This descriptive stanza shows that Keats still holds nature dear to him and that he realises what delights on earth there still are. If he died these would all pass unrecorded and uncovered by his poetry. The use of assonance is used to create lingering and yearning effects whilst describing his longing for a new life and rhapsodising on the delights it could bring him:
“O, for a draught of vintage! That hath been cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, tasting of flora and the country green, dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth!”. The long vowel sounds and alliteration of “cooled” and “deep-delved” make the reader linger and take a moment to appreciate the sensuous, luscious, delicious scenes being described. Alliteration is used to a similar degree, the repeated ‘b’s’ of ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’ moulding a delightfully sensual sounding passage.
In ‘When I Have Fears’ he uses the pastoral ‘harvest’ metaphor to compare the gathering of grain to the gathering of thoughts:
“before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, before-high-piled books, in charact’ry, hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain”. In this natural imagery he thinks of his brain as already containing all his poems. His worry is whether he will live long enough to write them all down, the ‘gathering’ or writing of which can only be done when, like the grain, his thoughts are ripe and ready to be harvested. This natural imagery is a recurrent theme throughout Keats’ poems and it is through nature that Keats manages to fully express his feelings in this quatrain.
The assonance of the words ‘gleaned’ and ‘teamed’ is used to emphasise the sheer amount of ideas inside his mind, again making the reader linger and stretch the words, expanding them as they read.
Lastly the alliteration of ‘feel, faery’ helps create a soft almost magical effect whilst describing the power and effects of love.
The type of language used throughout this poem is fairly constant whereas in ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ there is one abrupt contrast in language in the third stanza. It
follows the change in mood, the hard consonants of “spectre” and the stuttering, broken pauses created by added commas build to create the mood of this stanza. The whole feeling of the stanza itself is one of a sad, heavy, forgotten existence which contrasts with the soft luscious language used to describe the beauty of the nightingales eternal song. It is the change in the language of the last two lines of ‘When I Have Fears’ that reflects Keats own change in thought – as he’s crossing the ‘shore’ from one state to another. The previous rhyming words at the end of each line have been long and soft ending in vowels such as ‘more’ or ‘grain’. However the last rhyming couplet ends in ‘think’ and ‘sink’, two harder more definite sounding words that end in consonants. As in ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ this change reflects his change in mood or the contrast he is trying to demonstrate.
Keats uses the poetic devices of structure and rhyme carefully within both the poems. The ode form used in both poems was traditionally organised into three stanzas with the last in a different form from the rest. ‘When I Have Fears’ is written in a traditional sonnet form with three quatrains and a rhyming couplet but is less experimental than ‘Ode To A Nightingale’. In the latter poem Keats experimented with the form by adding four more stanzas and by having an experimental rhyme pattern. He used ten lines in each stanza, usually containing a Shakespearian quatrain and a Petrarchan sestet.
Both poems use a strict rhyme pattern; ‘When I Have Fears’ follows the scheme of ABAB with a rhyming couplet at the end. This is reminiscent of Shakespearian Sonnets. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ follows the more experimental scheme of ABAB CDECDE. It is a change in this rhythm and structure at the end of ‘Ode To a Nightingale’ that demonstrates a possible change in the direction of Keats thoughts within the poetry. The change is summarized by the onomatopoeia of the first word: “forlorn” which is also the last word of the seventh stanza. This word doubling sounds almost like the mournful tolling of a bell ringing out with the repeated ‘or’ sounds, into the empty space that follows. It also demonstrates a change in rhythm leading the reader to almost stumble and pause. Overall the stanza allows Keats to wake up to his senses and wonder as to whether his vision was all just a dream. It also is as if he is waking from his intoxicated state and returning to the real world.
The rhyming couplet at the end of ‘When I Have Fears’ is similar to the last stanza of “Ode to a Nightingale” in that Keats changes the style of the poem. Similarly to ‘Ode To a Nightingale’ he uses a pause before the final lines. ‘Of unreflecting love! –‘
The poem then moves on to discuss the insignificance of this compared to the ‘wide world’.
Overall Keats shows his personal concerns in “Ode to a Nightingale” and “When I Have Fears” in many different ways: firstly by using a vast array of poetic techniques, particularly his naturalistic imagery and secondly by the very meaning behind the poems. Keats knew that he would die of consumption and both poems show how he realises this fact. He was also in a deep state of melancholy when he wrote his poems, and this would well describe Keats’ need to leave his life, and how he fears that he will never do all the things that he set out to do in life.
