Keats and a Nightingale

Ode to Nightingale – Keats

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stained mouth; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
 and with thee fade away into the forest dim

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

    What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

    Where youth grows pale, and spectra-thin, and dies

I just see him being jealous of the bird because of its ignorance, and I understand. The bird doesn’t have to worry about family sickness, bills that have to be paid, job issues, drama, schooling, society problems, or anything other than food for that matter!! The bird is happy, while we as people are not! The bid doesn’t have worries, it doesn’t have problems. It doesn’t freak out because of its loss of hair, because its parents died with financial problems, (if you wanted a BIG whopper). I just, I just understand, and I wish that just for a second, for a second, I could talk to Keats, and just talk this over with him, to see how his mind worked, to see how he created this poem with the differences between a nightingale of all birds, and a human with more problems than the bird even imagined!

I can’t say this to someone’s face and they take me seriously, but I am heartbroken over our world. The sickness, the homeless, the hungry, the parentless, the pure brokenness and sorrow that this world and this nation, this great nation, feel, is unbearable. To me, it is the homeless that hits home, that hits my heart the hardest. The reason is personal, and it’s something I don’t share with many people. I find myself envious of the bird as well, as sad as that sounds. The bird doesn’t have to worry about where home is but people do. And that kills me. There are so many homeless out there, and the first thing people see when they see a homeless person is about maybe they’re on drugs, or maybe they are on the run. Don’t think that please! There are people out there who have hit a rough patch in their life, and just need a helping hand to point them in the right direction. There are people out there living on the streets and under our bridges that have loved ones looking for them, who would do anything to have them back home, safe, and sound. I know, off topic, I’m going back now, I’ve finished my rant.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath; 

People look toward death to ease their pain, as horrible as that sounds. Some things are too hard to bear, and that is something that I personally, am lucky to have never felt. I get that he’s saying that sometimes, during his pain and suffering, that he does have that wishful thought. That he does sometimes wish that death would just come and whisk him away so he could be like the nightingale and have no worries, and have no fears….






P.S. I commented on Lucy Beth's "Schleier-Mah-Who?"