The dream-like state into which the speaker enters is very
important because it allows him to meditate over the significance of the nightingale's
song to him and what it means. The speaker becomes intoxicated with the song of the
nightingale and the many different images that it provokes in his mind. This causes him
to wish for poetic inspiration that he might fly away from the suffering and
transformations that time inflicts on people:
Here, where men sit and hear each other
groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey
hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and
dies...
The poet imagines
that practising his art would be able to free him from his torment and that even death
would be a release that would be desired if the bird could sing to him as he dies. As
the nightingale's song dies down, the speaker returns to consciousness, and contemplates
whether his visions were just a dream or reality.
In all of
this it is important to realise how the nightingale, through many different historical
periods, transcends time and place and symbolises eternity. Therefore, symbolically we
can say that the nightingale dwells in some sort of eternal realm, whereas the speaker
lives in a world where decay and time hold dominion. It is only by leaving that realm,
however temporarily, that the speaker is thus able to comment critically upon
it.
No comments:
Post a Comment