Poem of the Week - Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Nightingale is a poem by John Keats. It was written in May, 1819, in Hampstead, England. Critics generally agree that “Nightingale” was the second of the five “great odes”of 1819 and its themes are reflected in its “twin,” Ode on a Grecian Urn. Keats’s friend and roommate, Charles Brown, described the composition of this beautiful work as follows:
“In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found these scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well legible; and it was difficult to arrange the stanzas on so many scraps. With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, a poem which has been the delight of everyone.”
The famous portrait of Keats, “Keats listening to a nightingale on Hampstead Heath” was painted by Joseph Severn in 1839.
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