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b"J Keats read by Classic Poetry Aloud: Giving voice to the poetry of the past.\\nwww.classicpoetryaloud.com\\n\\n--------------------------------------------\\n\\nOde to a Nightingale\\nby John Keats. (1795\\u20131821)\\n\\nMy heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains\\n My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,\\nOr emptied some dull opiate to the drains\\n One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:\\n'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,\\n But being too happy in thine happiness,\\n That thou, light-wing\\xe8d Dryad of the trees,\\n In some melodious plot\\n Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,\\n Singest of summer in full-throated ease.\\n\\nO for a draught of vintage! that hath been\\n Cool'd a long age in the deep-delv\\xe8d earth,\\nTasting of Flora and the country-green,\\n Dance, and Proven\\xe7al song, and sunburnt mirth!\\nO for a beaker full of the warm South!\\n Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,\\n With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,\\n And purple-stain\\xe8d mouth;\\n That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,\\n And with thee fade away into the forest dim:\\n\\nFade far away, dissolve, and quite forget\\n What thou among the leaves hast never known,\\nThe weariness, the fever, and the fret\\n Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;\\nWhere palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,\\n Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;\\n Where but to think is to be full of sorrow\\n And leaden-eyed despairs;\\n Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,\\n Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.\\n\\nAway! away! for I will fly to thee,\\n Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,\\nBut on the viewless wings of Poesy,\\n Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:\\nAlready with thee! tender is the night,\\n And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,\\n Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays\\n But here there is no light,\\n Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown\\n Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.\\n\\nI cannot see what flowers are at my feet,\\n Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,\\nBut, in embalm\\xe8d darkness, guess each sweet\\n Wherewith the seasonable month endows\\nThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;\\n White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;\\n Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;\\n And mid-May's eldest child,\\n The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,\\n The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.\\n\\nDarkling I listen; and, for many a time\\n I have been half in love with easeful Death,\\nCall'd him soft names in many a mus\\xe8d rhyme,\\n To take into the air my quiet breath;\\nNow more than ever seems it rich to die,\\n To cease upon the midnight with no pain,\\n While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad\\n In such an ecstasy!\\n Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain\\u2014\\n To thy high requiem become a sod.\\n\\nThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!\\n No hungry generations tread thee down;\\nThe voice I hear this passing night was heard\\n In ancient days by emperor and clown:\\nPerhaps the self-same song that found a path\\n Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,\\n She stood in tears amid the alien corn;\\n The same that ofttimes hath\\n Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam\\n Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.\\n\\nForlorn! the very word is like a bell\\n To toll me back from thee to my sole self!\\nAdieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well\\n As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.\\nAdieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades\\n Past the near meadows, over the still stream,\\n Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep\\n In the next valley-glades:\\n Was it a vision, or a waking dream?\\n Fled is that music:\\u2014do I wake or sleep?\\n\\n\\n\\nFirst aired: 7 February 2009\\n\\nFor hundreds more poetry readings, visit the Classic Poetry Aloud index.\\n\\nReading \\xa9 Classic Poetry Aloud 2009"