Ode to a Nightingale: Exploring the Transcendent Powers of Sound and Music

Ode to a Nightingale seemed to me like the sad, tragic cousin to Shelley's To Jane. Both depict the transcendent power of music; how auditory experiences can become vehicles to another realm. However, the world the Nightingale transports Keats to is much darker than the rose-colored paradise Shelley finds within Jane and her guitar. He employs several references to sound and music within the poem to convey the sense of this songbird.

• "Singest of summer in full-throated ease." This line literally feels like the summer of the poem; the true spark and light amongst so much darkness and gloom. The alliteration of singest of summer makes this line even sweeter.
• "Here, where men sit and hear each other groan." It feels like he is reducing the world he is stuck in to a melody of men's groans of despair. He has created a dark song for the life of men. 
• "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." This fixation with death is communicated through "listening" and "calling." Keats has forged a sonic relationship with death. 
• "To take into the air my quiet breath."This line echoes the previous ones and actualizes this relationship between death and noise. There is a physical exchange between the "quiet" breath of Keats and the air of death.  
• "While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy!" Here Keats is referencing the wild ecstasy of the songbird's ability to transcend life and death through the creation of song.