Solace in Abstract Death and the Beauty Before Dying in John Keats' Poetry

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An Analysis of The Theme of Death in John Keats's Odes
Death is the central theme of many of John Keats's works. In some poems, he seems to be frightful of the ugliness of death; in others, he attempts to explore its positive aspects, and in many others, he suggests metaphysical solutions to come out of this fear. He defines and celebrates death in his most famous odes using various literary devices like metaphors, imagery, symbolism, paradox, and personification. John Keats epitomizes two different outlooks regarding death in his two famous odes, "An Ode to Nightingale" and "Ode on Melancholy"; he finds solace in abstract death in the first ode, and he broadens the concept of death to everything around him in the second ode, where he desires to die after satisfying his aesthetic sense through beauty around him.
John Keats presents the idea of a positive death in his poem "An Ode to Nightingale." The poet longs for death, making him united with nature with utter positive meaning while placing it against the literal death hateful for him. The poem begins with the poet's heartache and "drowsy numbness," making him anticipate further numbness becoming a part of the nightingale's world. To show his withdrawal from the world and drowning into a sea of death-like detachment, he says, "one minute past and Lethe-wards had sunk" (Keats, "An Ode to Nightingale"). Lethe, the underworld river, metaphorically signifies the disconnection of Keats from the literal world by attracting him toward a figurative death.
However, along with the poet's longing to disappear and get united with his surroundings, his lyrics also merge with the theme of an optimistic death entirely. The poet is not depressed by the idea of mortality in this poem; instead, he is happy to think about the expected consequences of his gradual deadness. "Being too happy in thine happiness"; in this line, he expresses that he is not jealous of the nightingale's song's immortality but happy to die positively and get united with the beauty of nature. In the following stanzas, the poet is lost into the river's depth, where he discovers happiness by blindly joining the beautiful world around him by dying. Here, the poet uses rich imagery to denote his deep connection with his abstract surrounding, like he hears the buzz of flies, tastes "each sweet," drinks wine, and touches flowers (Keats, "An Ode to Nightingale"). Visual imagery is the only type he uses here because he has lost his sight. The poet does so to close his eyes to the views of the literal world before him and ultimately unify him with the allegorical world through a positive death. Throughout the poem, the poet dives deep into his desire for a figurative death, where beauty and emotions will not be fleeting but immortal. However, his vision is disturbed by the ugliness of the literal death, which is waiting for him all the time "Forlorn the very word is like a bell/ To toll me back from thee to sole self" (Keats, "An Ode to Nightingale"). These lines show the poet's rejoining of the literal world with its fundamental concepts of death after staying in a comma-like ...