Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beechen-latticed hollows, and the blows That sweep on summer’s mirth.

Let alone the the essence of life, Break the waveless main Bringing in the strings that sound To hold eternal silence. In every noise, in every whisper, The clouds touch the sky.

So wilt thou render back again? To ease this heart that’s burning, Looking beyond this night. Fold all life away, As the nightingale pauses And breathes the frozen air.

— Ode to a Nightingale

• John Keats