Close Reading of John Keats“Ode to a Nightingale,” by John Keats, details a speaker as he observes a nightingale singing nearby. This is not the only time Keats writes from the perspective of a brooding speaker, as in "When I fear that I may cease to be," but "Hymn to the Nightingale" separates itself from Keats's other works by using a different tone , a different syntactic structure and a metaphor. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay “Hymn to the Nightingale” opens with the speaker describing how his heart “aches” and that a “sleepy numbness grieves” his whole being, as if he had drunk a poison or “drunk an opiate deaf” (Nightingale 1-3). The speaker tries to express a sense of pain and fear within himself, as if he had taken a drug that was supposed to hurt him. The speaker lives in pain. In contrast, the speaker of “When I have Fears” talks about fear. The speaker fears an early death; he wants to have "well-heaped books" that contain his words as "rich barns [that hold] the fully ripe grain" (Fears 3-4). The difference between the two speakers is that the speaker in "When I Have Fears" has some hope within himself (intrinsically due to fear of premature death rather than acceptance of the possibility) of not dying before he has written what he says. which he believes himself capable of, while the speaker in “Nightingale” has completely succumbed to his feelings of terror, pain, and anguish Keal uses both speakers to portray a sense of desperation in both poems, but the emphasis on pain in “. Ode to a Nightingale" creates a point of contrast to the emphasis on fear in "When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be". uses structure to contrast his works. From a perspective point of view, both poems are a look at the respective speaker's thoughts, with the speaker intentionally unidentified. "Ode to a Nightingale" comprises eight stanzas with 10 lines of poetry per stanza. "When I am afraid", in contrast, is a sonnet, containing 14 lines of poetry in one stanza. “Nightingale” features an AB, AB, CDE, CDE rhyme scheme for each verse, while “When I have Fears” uses an AB, AB, CD, CD, EF, EF, GG scheme for the entire work. The different lengths allow the respective poems to express themselves. When I am afraid” is more compact; the speaker describes his fear as if it were nothing new to him. “Nightingale” being much longer emphasizes the speaker observing an external force that resonates within him at that moment, although he also dwells on personal matters. The nightingale itself allows Keats to explore a longing within the speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale”; leak. The “light-winged dryad of the trees” sings “of summer in full voice” (Nightingale 5-10). Her song serves as a reminder of summer, of the “[taste] of Flora,” “the green country, / the dance, the Provençal song, and the tanned gaiety” (Nightingale 13-14). The speaker wants "a cup full of the warm South" and filled with "red Hippocrene," (Nightingale 15-16), a fountain said to have waters that provide poetic inspiration. The world he imagines through the bird's song is in stark contrast to the world he lives in. Living among the leaves, the nightingale has never known "the tiredness, the fever" or the "agitation" that exist in the world of man. . In this world men “hear each other groaning,” cerebral palsy “shakes some, sad, last gray hairs,” and “where youth grows pale, grows thin and dies” (Nightingale 24-26). The speaker sees terror in his life as a human being, where “to think is to be full of pain” (Nightingale 27). The song of the nightingale takes the speaker away from his reality, showing him a.