Ode to a Nightingale

By John Keats

Voice: Benedict Cumberbatch  

• My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
• My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
• Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
• One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
• 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
• But being too happy in thine happiness,—
• That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
• In some melodious plot
• Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
• Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
• O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
• Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
• Tasting of Flora and the country green,
• Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
• O for a beaker full of the warm South,
• Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
• With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
• And purple-stained mouth;
• That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
• And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
• Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
• What thou among the leaves hast never known,
• The weariness, the fever, and the fret
• Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
• Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
• Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
• Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
• And leaden-eyed despairs,
• Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
• Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
• Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
• Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
• But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
• Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
• Already with thee! tender is the night,
• And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
• Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
• But here there is no light,
• Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
• Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
• I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
• Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
• But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
• Wherewith the seasonable month endows
• The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
• White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
• Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
• And mid-May's eldest child,
• The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
• The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
• Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
• I have been half in love with easeful Death,
• Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
• To take into the air my quiet breath;
• Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
• To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
• While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
• In such an ecstasy!
• Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
• To thy high requiem become a sod.
• 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 oft-times hath
• Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
• Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
• Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
• To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
• Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
• As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
• Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
• Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
• Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
• In the next valley-glades:
• Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
• Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?