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'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems
Whether in longer narrative works like "The Eve of St Agnes," or in such sonnets as "On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer," or in magnificent odes like those "To a Nightingale" and "To Autumn," John Keats's verse resonates with lyricism and with sensuous imagery, however melancholy his tone or his subject. This compact selection includes many of Keats’s greatest shorter poems, as well as extracts from his longer works.
126 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1819
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About the author
John Keats
1,396 books2,518 followersRich melodic works in classical imagery of British poet John Keats include "
The Eve of Saint Agnes
," "
Ode on a Grecian Urn
," and "
To Autumn
," all in 1819.
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 23, 2017
(March 20. 2017: This is one of the more respectable of my early reviews on this site.)
[From September 2012]
Ode To Psyche: He let his imagination run wild and saw the figure of Greek myth and dedicated some lines to wanting her. T.S. Eliot's favorite ode.
Ode To A Nightingale: He is in pain. And then a bird sings. He listens and meditates on it, and then is tired of the bird. This is the longest of the "Odes" and is MUCH better than I make it sound.
Ode To A Grecian Urn: This is the one everyone has to study at some point. I think it is safe to say it is his best known poem period. Here is a picture of an urn that Keats would have saw in a museum back then. In this poem Keats takes the pictures on the urn and transforms it, through an imagined "conversation" to the object, into one of the best stories ever written. (Guess which one of these is my favorite.)
Ode To Melancholy: Shortest ode. Dr. Keats prescribes some lyrical medication for dealing with melancholy.
Ode on Indolence: He sees "shadows" that turn out to be virtues he use to want in his life but now just sees them fade (Love, ambition, and..."Posey").
To Autumn: Well the fall is a season where certain things live and other things die...until spring. But more importantly it is necessary so we better just enjoy it (my interpretation).
So there you have it, all of his 1819 odes. I could have done more of his poetry (and I might in the future) but for now this will do. If you can stand poetry you can't go wrong with these poems.
[From September 2012]
Ode To Psyche: He let his imagination run wild and saw the figure of Greek myth and dedicated some lines to wanting her. T.S. Eliot's favorite ode.
Ode To A Nightingale: He is in pain. And then a bird sings. He listens and meditates on it, and then is tired of the bird. This is the longest of the "Odes" and is MUCH better than I make it sound.
Ode To A Grecian Urn: This is the one everyone has to study at some point. I think it is safe to say it is his best known poem period. Here is a picture of an urn that Keats would have saw in a museum back then. In this poem Keats takes the pictures on the urn and transforms it, through an imagined "conversation" to the object, into one of the best stories ever written. (Guess which one of these is my favorite.)
Ode To Melancholy: Shortest ode. Dr. Keats prescribes some lyrical medication for dealing with melancholy.
Ode on Indolence: He sees "shadows" that turn out to be virtues he use to want in his life but now just sees them fade (Love, ambition, and..."Posey").
To Autumn: Well the fall is a season where certain things live and other things die...until spring. But more importantly it is necessary so we better just enjoy it (my interpretation).
So there you have it, all of his 1819 odes. I could have done more of his poetry (and I might in the future) but for now this will do. If you can stand poetry you can't go wrong with these poems.
February 23, 2021
By pure coincidence, I read these poems together for the first time today, on the 200th anniversary of John Keats' death. His odes are beautiful.
December 3, 2017
When through the Old Oak Forest I'm gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I'm consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
- Sonnet on sitting down to read King Lear once again, John Keats.
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I'm consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
- Sonnet on sitting down to read King Lear once again, John Keats.
February 22, 2024
'In the Odes, Keats has no master; and their indefinable beauty is so direct and so distinctive an effluence of his soul that he has no disciple.' – Selincourt
In keeping with the leitmotif off all poetry that is termed ‘fabulous’, the Odes of Keats reveal us no conspicuous originality of thought. The sentiments that pulse through the are as old as man's desires and man's throbbing heart.
But nowhere literature, save in some of Shakespeare's Sonnets, do these emotions touch us with the same lingering despair, for nowhere else do they find such intensely imaginative and flawlessly artisitic expression.
In the opinion of Middleton Murry they are 'poems comparable to nothing in English literature save the works of Shakespeare's maturity. Keats's personal experi ences of desperateness in love, anguish in a brother's death and anticipation of sudden termination to his creative career, serve to inspire and colour the Odes
The Odes of Keats conglomerate in them the uncharacteristic excellences of the form with absolute freedom from its characteristic drawbacks, such as arduousness of wording, over-elaboration of form, insincerity and rhetorical narrative, which detract from the poetic charm of the Odes of Dryden, Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Coleridge and even Shelley.
They are, like old-fashioned odes, always in the form of an address or entreaty: dignified in style and more decorous in tone than simple lyrics. The progression of thought in them is always restrained and the poetic logic has its own uniformity. Their structure is neither too relentless to rupture their unity, nor too willowy to indicate their alteration from the song proper.
The odes of Keats are illustrious by their pathos of feeling, their opulently contemplative consistency, their splendour of descriptions and their immaculate workmanship. They are astonishing for their Hellenic lucidity, their chiselled attractiveness, their unavoidable poetic gusto. They surprise us with their ominous sweetness, their long- drawn out tune, their fine excess and their glorious independence.
Keats has attempted no classical variety of the Ode, Pindaric or Horatian. His range as an odist is confined to that of a modern romantic ode, with preference for the stanzaic usage, of which he is the greatest master. His odes are not choric, but chastely private and personal.
They are the most representative, richest and the most pleasant-sounding expression of the full current of his soul, his keen sense of beauty of Nature and the significance of Art and Mythology.
I have often heard my teachers say that Keats would have remained immortal as a poet if only he had written the six superb odes: On Indolence, To Psyche, To Melancholy, To a Nighting On a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn, and set his pen aside.
I dare disagree.
In keeping with the leitmotif off all poetry that is termed ‘fabulous’, the Odes of Keats reveal us no conspicuous originality of thought. The sentiments that pulse through the are as old as man's desires and man's throbbing heart.
But nowhere literature, save in some of Shakespeare's Sonnets, do these emotions touch us with the same lingering despair, for nowhere else do they find such intensely imaginative and flawlessly artisitic expression.
In the opinion of Middleton Murry they are 'poems comparable to nothing in English literature save the works of Shakespeare's maturity. Keats's personal experi ences of desperateness in love, anguish in a brother's death and anticipation of sudden termination to his creative career, serve to inspire and colour the Odes
The Odes of Keats conglomerate in them the uncharacteristic excellences of the form with absolute freedom from its characteristic drawbacks, such as arduousness of wording, over-elaboration of form, insincerity and rhetorical narrative, which detract from the poetic charm of the Odes of Dryden, Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Coleridge and even Shelley.
They are, like old-fashioned odes, always in the form of an address or entreaty: dignified in style and more decorous in tone than simple lyrics. The progression of thought in them is always restrained and the poetic logic has its own uniformity. Their structure is neither too relentless to rupture their unity, nor too willowy to indicate their alteration from the song proper.
The odes of Keats are illustrious by their pathos of feeling, their opulently contemplative consistency, their splendour of descriptions and their immaculate workmanship. They are astonishing for their Hellenic lucidity, their chiselled attractiveness, their unavoidable poetic gusto. They surprise us with their ominous sweetness, their long- drawn out tune, their fine excess and their glorious independence.
Keats has attempted no classical variety of the Ode, Pindaric or Horatian. His range as an odist is confined to that of a modern romantic ode, with preference for the stanzaic usage, of which he is the greatest master. His odes are not choric, but chastely private and personal.
They are the most representative, richest and the most pleasant-sounding expression of the full current of his soul, his keen sense of beauty of Nature and the significance of Art and Mythology.
I have often heard my teachers say that Keats would have remained immortal as a poet if only he had written the six superb odes: On Indolence, To Psyche, To Melancholy, To a Nighting On a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn, and set his pen aside.
I dare disagree.
Read
June 29, 2024Part 1 of my summer reading series
I have been on a mission to refamiliarize myself with the poetic canon. I’ve been taking this online poetry workshop and Keat’s Ode’s was our first stop on said poetry tour de force.
Things learned: to truly understand poetry, especially the romantics you have to have a good handle on Greek mythology.
Keats is pretty emo. I am surprised he is not marketed like a Poe or Dickinson the way he talks of self harm and suicide ideation in ode to melancholy.
We had some pretty interesting conversations about Keat’s lost stanzas and if it’s revisionist of us to go back and read the poem with the stanza included.
I have been on a mission to refamiliarize myself with the poetic canon. I’ve been taking this online poetry workshop and Keat’s Ode’s was our first stop on said poetry tour de force.
Things learned: to truly understand poetry, especially the romantics you have to have a good handle on Greek mythology.
Keats is pretty emo. I am surprised he is not marketed like a Poe or Dickinson the way he talks of self harm and suicide ideation in ode to melancholy.
We had some pretty interesting conversations about Keat’s lost stanzas and if it’s revisionist of us to go back and read the poem with the stanza included.
July 11, 2025
Forget the Preface, just read the Odes
His perfumed English words drip like jewelled dew drops from the reader's mouth. Oh yes, these poems implore to be read out loud, even to one's self.
If English Poetry ever approached perfection it was in these Odes. Keats is a moonchlild, an Apollo, a Nightingale, driven to articulate in verse that beauty is truth, and that this truth is beautiful in its expression.
His perfumed English words drip like jewelled dew drops from the reader's mouth. Oh yes, these poems implore to be read out loud, even to one's self.
If English Poetry ever approached perfection it was in these Odes. Keats is a moonchlild, an Apollo, a Nightingale, driven to articulate in verse that beauty is truth, and that this truth is beautiful in its expression.
October 21, 2023
While language is dated his Wisdom comes through.
Keats’ thoughts on Fame, Death, and Beauty are timeless though his language and style are probably foreign to 21st Century readers.
The Audible copy also contained some Sonnets along with the Odes. The narration was perfectly appropriate to the poems. Four Stars. ****
Keats’ thoughts on Fame, Death, and Beauty are timeless though his language and style are probably foreign to 21st Century readers.
The Audible copy also contained some Sonnets along with the Odes. The narration was perfectly appropriate to the poems. Four Stars. ****
March 20, 2022
I'd forgotten how stunningly beautiful Keats' poetry is.
August 23, 2022
Ode to a nightingale…Gosh! There is something about the way a poet can make something we never truly think about in such depth so utterly appealing.
June 15, 2023
Six romantic odes from 1819. Possibly the basis of his best known work, particularly Ode to a Grecian Urn.
December 23, 2024
thelw na parw pipa ston Khts
December 30, 2024
A well written collection of Odes, ceremonious lyric poems, that explore the landscape of the human.
March 8, 2017
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Ode to a Nightingale
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Read
September 11, 20151.
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
2.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
3.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
November 13, 2016
Amazing!! These are definitely a must-read. The language is classical but it's written so well that it becomes simple to understand. The poems have so many layers that it's so easy to get lost in them and indeed I did.
April 8, 2013
Some beautiful writing; just a shame he died young.
September 11, 2017
Simply some of the most sublime poetry ever written.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews