Ode To A Nightingale Test Questions – Flashcards

The poem felt reflective. It seemed more thoughtful in it's tone- very inward. It felt murky. I felt the tone very heavily. However, rereading it after studying made me think more deeply on the subject matter of mortality or time, as well as importance.

I. I feel drugged because I feel so happy for your happiness of summer. II. I wish that I might have a summer drink and dance so that I might leave this world and be with you in the forest. III. Leave so that you might not know mortality and sickness and death, where beauty and love are not. IV. I'll come to you, who resides in nature, with my poetry. V. I cannot see, and can only guess and sense the beauty around. VI. As time goes on, I want to die more to end pain, while you, Nightingale, sing happily to a man who does not listen VII. You have have happily sung throughout many ages and sadness, not bound by the same mortality , but live by a magic that can no longer be attained VIII. Immortality is unreachable- so I come back to reality. Good bye nightingale, you who cannot die and sing so lovely. Go away to your home. Was this whole experience real, or a dream?

The poem is a reflection on mortality.

Ignorance is bliss Mortality/Life vs Immortality/Death Passage of Time Reality vs Ideal/Imagination Intense feeling vs numbness Experiencing things through a different medium

Alliteration in stanza 2,3- In stanza 2 the alliteration creates a playful feeling as well as almost working as an onomatopoeia Personification- Classical and biblical allusion- classical allusions bring inthr idea of human definitiins and embodiments and perhaps the speaker is contrasting the myths and the nightingale ABABCDCDEDE Rhyme Scheme- Shift in alliteration/consonance/assonance- mimics shift in mood of speaker's fantasy