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| | Ode to a Nightingale |
 | | A major concern in "Ode to a Nightingale" is Keats's perception of the conflicted nature of human life, i.e., the interconnection or mixture of pain/joy, intensity of feeling/numbness of feeling, life/death, mortal/immortal, the actual/the ideal, and separation/connection. |
 | | In Stanza VI, the poet begins to distance himself from the nightingale, which he joined in imagination in stanzas IV and V. Keats yearns to die, a state which he imagines as only joyful, as pain-free, and to merge with the bird's song. |
 | | The nightingale is characterized as wholly blissful--"full-throated ease" in stanza I and "pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (lines 7-8). |
| academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu /english/melani/cs6/nighting.html (2245 words) |
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