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—

Know that through thee I drink with the joy of youth, While visions of the Past still flow ahead,

And the damp air brings forth that haunting sound Of the loud wind in scriptures of a million leaves.

For you like a warm embrace return home to me: I breathe you, that I may never forget my roots, Your music flows in ice-water veins And freezes my heart into softest resolve.

— Ode to a Nightingale

• John Keats