Transcendence Of Death By Johne Keats Analysis

In the sixth stanza, Keats completely overthrows rationality by having the speaker claim, “for a many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death” (Lines 51-52). If rationality is all about self-preservation, and if many philosophers looked down on suicide as a desire rather than any real need, Keats has created a speaker that is seemingly entranced by death, thinking it “rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain” (Lines 55-56). The transcendence of death from a physical plane to an entirely metaphysical plane is described as “an ecstasy,” which is entirely drawn from emotion (Line 58). Additionally, Keats mentions an auditory sense with the “high requiem,” but seemingly makes an allusion that either he is “a sod” since
Its song is instinctive and never changing since it is how nightingales are identified, and therefore even “in ancient days by emperor and clown” the same nightingale song would have been heard (Line 64). It is a sad sound, though, a song that would have made “Ruth,” a biblical character as Keats again cannot only really on the senses but images to inspire the senses though this time his English audience would have been able to recognize it with or without an education, cry with bittersweet homesickness (Line
However, he begrudgingly admits that this altered state of mind, this daydream, is temporary and is still not good enough to truly perceive the truth; “the fancy cannot cheat so well” (Line 73). A daydream is considered cheating, like Plato’s “falsehood” (389b). Up until the end of “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats continues to ply on the senses with images of the country side in “meadows…stream…hill-side…valley-glades” and the conspicuous absence of the “music” of the nightingale itself that inspired all of this (Lines 76-80). Rather than ending solely on an appeal to physical senses, Keats leaves off with a question that inspires sensations as an image. “Do I wake or sleep” forces the reader to consider what it is like for them in that liminal moment, and then to consider if it was “a vision, or a waking dream” (Lines 79-80). The reader is not told the truth, but must deduce it for