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Lines 21-40, Keats' Ode to a Nightingale

Wichwood Forest, J.M.W Turner
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget10
What thou among the leaves hast never known,10
The weariness, the fever, and the fret10
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;10
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,10
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;10
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow11
And leaden-eyed despairs;6
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,10
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.11

The tone is one of helplessness and transience or mortality. "Where men sit and hear each other groan" if instead of sitting they tried to do something to help one another there would be less pain but he mourns that for now they just sit. The poet is tempted to forget his cares with the 'wine' of inspiration but quickly realizes the little it would do, instead he will rise above with poetry:

Dovedale by Moonlight, Joseph Wright
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,10
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,11
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,9
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:10
Already with thee! tender is the night,10
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,10
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;10
But here there is no light6
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown11
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.11

One thing that strikes me is how it's like a stream of consciousness. I read that it's been critiqued for lack of coherency but our thoughts are not always coherent nor our feelings.
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Caroline Helstone said…
The groaning old men seem out of place here. But possibly they represent an image of crabbed uninspired age, which Keats feared he would descend to. I think the pale youth is Keats' brother Tom, who died of consumption in 1818, the year before this poem was written. Keats thought that Tom died of heartbreak, and was angry when he discovered the man who had been sending love letters (pretending to be a woman) to Tom. That thinking leads to sorrow could be related to his mother's and brother's deaths, but possibly a comment on the new age. The Napoleonic Wars had ended a few years ago, and the 1810's had their Luddite riots. It was noticeably more industrial than the 18th century. Keats was well-known for opposing the 18th-century rationalists who removed the beauty of nature and preferred to dwell in feeling. This is ironic, as he greatly admired William Hazlitt, the Romantic-era critic who was nevertheless a skeptic. Hazlitt is actually mentioned in Wordsworth's poem "Expostulation and reply," which shows him up as a bookish cynic.
June 20, 2012
Katherine Cox said…
I don't think the men he refers to as groaning are necessarily old, the next line seems more to contrast the old and infirm living and the youth dieing. Yes, I agree with the pale youth being thoughts of Tom. I hadn't heard of the letters.
June 20, 2012
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