The fleeting nature of happiness and youth is one of the great themes in Keats's Great Odes. In the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," for example, he becomes envious of the people depicted on an old pot, because they always remain in the same constant state of joy. In "Ode to a Nightingale," the speaker manages to imagine himself into such a state: the nightingale's world. But the imagination is not powerful enough to carry on the fiction after the nightingale has flown away, and his waking vision ends after only a few stanzas of bliss.
Questions About Transience
- Why would nightingales be less transient (or in other words, changeable) than human beings over the course of history?
- Is reading or writing poetry any less of a transient experience than drunkenness?
- Why are so many plants and flowers featured in the poem, and what might they symbolize?
- What do the last two lines mean to you? Why can't the speaker distinguish between being awake from being asleep?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
The end of the poem suggests that life might be just as much of a dream or fantasy as the speaker's "waking dream" about the nightingale.
The flowers in the poem symbolize momentary intoxication and fleeting beauty.