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 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 spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Although the stinting banks of this world’s shores, I cannot do it to thee.

So let me tell you, O nightingale, That I have heard the same discourses lately, And what developed in nature’s own deep dreams, A wakeful multitude, wherein beauty dwells; To see the sun all things made fair,— Until so long as we must love their light, I thought I saw those worthy of the day, And all things else our feeble hands may touch.

    And now, it is all far away.

Henceforth I dare not go in search of thee, Where are my ears to hear thy dulcet cries? But stay, thou glorious bird! the woods are full of thee; Look how I see thy wings brushed with the skies! From off my wand I would weave no petty strings For fairer dreams beyond the hills’ high weaves;
But still I say, thou hast not flown this way And claim the care, so high my heart believes.

• John Keats