Commenting Keats with Quotes

Ode to a Nightingale

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

In stanza 7, the nightingale is a universal and undying voice: the voice of nature, of imaginative sympathy and therefore of an ideal Romantic poetry. The world of Nature is a cycle of change; "the seasonable month", "the coming musk-rose", and consequently can seem fresh and immortal, like the bird whose song seems to be its spirit. The bird lacks man's self-consciousness. It is not alienated from nature, but wholly merged in nature. Such considerations suggest the sense in which the nightingale is "immortal." The bird shares in the immortality of nature. Keats makes perfectly clear the sense in which the nightingale is immortal: it is in harmony with its world; not, as man is, in competition with his.The poet experiences a heightened sense of reality, in direct contrast to a bird seemingly not of this world.
The same song (though sung by different individual nightingales) has been heard over time by all types of people — both “emperor and clown.” Its beauty thus transcends the human boundaries of time, class, and even geography. Upon hearing the same call, the Biblical Ruth (or so the speaker imagines) felt the same sense of alienation the speaker has experienced. In this sense the call is immortal because it speaks to man in a way that does not change over time. In a second sense, the nightingale itself is immortal simply because it “was not born for death. Lacking the ability to think — and thus to foresee its own destiny — it cannot conceive of its own passing as humans can. It feels no rift between itself and the natural world whose song it sings with such “full throated ease.” Free from fear, the nightingale is naturally immune to the power death has over thinking humans and is, in a way, “immortal.”