‘’Where is the Pastoral Tradition in Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale?’’
Two hundred years after the Renaissance period in England, critics became concerned in the reasoning behind John Keats’s poetry. They searched many of the origins of the poet’s references to his works and this gave assistance into asserting that he was a poet in search of the ideal to escape from the real world of ‘’fever and fret’’. (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 3) This is due to the experience of cruel disappointments in his personal life. Ode to a Nightingale is a fine example of the cruel disappointments that Keats faced in life for he wrote the Ode soon after the death of his brother Tom who was suffering from tuberculosis. In one of Keats’s personal letters (Gittings 1970: letter 263) Keats claimed that he and his brothers could never count on any happiness lasting – that they were continually confronting death in the family. Keats shows this pain in stanza 3 of the poem:
‘’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;’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 3)

However, Ode to a Nightingale also portrays Keats’s escape from the cold realities of life. It is through this ‘escape’ that I am going to shape this essay into the pastoral tradition. My main focus shall be how the Ode offers a resemblance to a poem of pastoral retirement but has a pastoral elegy concealed within it.
The term ‘pastoral’ today has various definitions; if we start with the cradle of pastoral poetry like Theocritus’ first idyll, we understand that the pastoral comprises of idealised landscapes and beautiful music: ‘’ Sweet is the whispering music of yonder pine that sings Over the water-brooks, and sweet the melody of your pipe’’ (Theocritus: 1st stanza)
Several other works have considered the pastoral as being a reference to the ‘Golden Age’ where life is simple, true-hearted, and free from the artificiality of urban life. It has often been categorised as a ‘’a double longing after innocence and happiness, based on the antithesis of Art and Nature. ’’ (Greg 1906: 5) We can see this in Shakespeare’s As you like it where he makes ‘Arden’ a faithful image of the Golden Age.
Other poets like Renato Poggioli define the realm of pastoral as being a ‘’ wishful dream of a happiness to be gained without effort’’ (Alpers 1982: 438)
It would therefore be difficult to assert an exact definition of the provincial hence the heart of this essay will examine all of the above as being pastoral.
Ode to a Nightingale is about the author making a retreat in nature with the song of a nightingale, whilst explaining the effects that is produced on him. Bearing in mind that the pastoral usually includes a resistance between an epitome of nature and reality, and a dissention between the quest for easiness and a complicated critical society; it is not surprising that Keats has perceived this poem as a convivial medium to write about the pastoral tradition. Devastated by the reality that surrounded his existence, the poet decided to retreat into the green world of the nightingale:
‘’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy 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.’’ (Keats’s Ode to a nightingale: stanza 1)

There are two important features to think about here, the ‘green world’ and the ‘nightingale’.
The ‘green world’ also celebrated as nature is something that is much used by pastoral poets in their poems. John Milton’s ‘’Lycidas’’ for example is full of charming descriptions of the idyllic beauty of nature:

‘’Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, … The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head’’ (Milton’s Lycidas: stanza 9)

Andrew Marvell’s ‘’The Garden’’ is another example of how nature is used in the pastoral world:

‘’No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name…’’ (Marvell’s the Garden: stanza 3)

Keats in Ode to a Nightingale uses the green world as an instrument of sanctuary to escape from the pain of real life. In the first stanza of the Ode, we find the poet experiencing relief by the feeling of renewed life when he comments on the ‘’ light- winged Dryad of the trees’’. In the second stanza he yearns for a wine fermented in the cheerful areas of Provence; whilst wishing for this wine to allow him to retire from the world of truth and to take flight in the forest where he can bond with the nightingale:

‘’O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool’d for a long age in the deep- delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! …
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 2)

We understand from this that nature is often a necessary device in pastoral pieces so as to give course to a process of annihilation to the torment. Critic Harold E Toliver supports this argument when he voices out that ‘’ In Christian pastoralists such as Spenser and Milton, nature in the broad sense of the word… presents stronger barriers to reconciling what is and what ought to be.’’ ( Toliver 1963: 83)

If Stanza 1 and 2 enable readers to see the escape from the cold reality, they also show us the uncomplicated lifestyle that rural life can offer. Keats makes allusion to the green flora of the country side and of the jollity that Provence (French rural area) shall provide. It is interesting to note that simplicity of the bucolic has often been referred in works considered to be pastoral.

William Shakespeare’s ‘’As you like it’’ for example, presents ‘Arden’ in his play as a replacement to the deceit of courtly life. We can see this when the Duke compares life at court and life in Arden:

‘’Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?’’ (Shakespeare’s As you like it: Act 1 scene 1)

Shifting to the Nightingale, we find that in stanza 4 of the Ode, readers manage to come by a more proper image of the bird:

‘’Already with thee! Tender is the night, And haply the Queen- Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 4)

It is said that ‘’the nightingale, classically associated with poetry, is with the moon, goddess of the ideal world’’ (Garrod 1929: 135)

Here, Keats portrays the above perfectly by showing the flawless world in which the Nightingale lives in and how he finds solace in her song. What is fascinating here is the fact that Nightingales’ songs are often the symbols used by pastoralists in their poems to show an idealised world. A nightingale is considered to be pure and so free from corruption. It is said that ‘’Pastoral poets have always been concerned with the extent to which pleasurable song can confront and, if not transform and celebrate, then accept and reconcile man to the stresses and realities of his situation.’’ (Alpers 1982: 468) This argument confirms Keats’s joy at seeing and listening to the nightingale. In Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘’The Nymph’s reply to the shepherd’’, we also find a nightingale -‘’Philomel’’ who is referred to for the beauty of her song and how when she stops singing everything turns unpleasant:

‘’And Philomel becometh dumb, The rest complains of cares to come’’ (Ralegh’s The Nymph’s reply to the shepherd: stanza 2)

Since the nightingale in poetry is regarded as living in a beautiful world and giving others pleasurable moments by her songs; one could argue that she also represents a genre of invitation to the speakers of the poems to enter her world - the pastoral community. In effect, Keats here, is mesmerised by her beauty, freedom and song and all he wants is to leave the world of human beings and be with and like the nightingale:
‘’Away! Away! for I will fly to thee,’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 4)
The pastoral invitation from the nightingale is important because it tells or shows the speaker of the poem what he is missing by living in the real world. Kimberley Huth states that the pastoral invitation is significant because it allows for ‘’the mode’s constitutive contrast between city and country, urban and rustic’’ (Huth 2011: 68)
So far I have been shedding light on how Ode to a Nightingale can be seen as a pastoral retirement; I shall now explain how it may also conceal a pastoral elegy within it.
According to George Norlin in his ‘’The Conventions of the Pastoral Elegy’’, the pastoral elegy has four stages:

‘’All of nature mourns / The riddle of this Painful Earth/contrast between immortality of Nature’s life and the mortality of man/ Peace! Peace! he is not dead!’’ (Norlin 1911: 297/306/307/309)

As seen at the beginning of this essay stanza 3 of Ode to a Nightingale reflects the death of Keats’ brother Tom but if we take Norlin’s first phase of a pastoral elegy – one could argue that there is no mourning of nature for his brother here. Yet we can denote the speaker’s sadness as he goes on to describe the suffering and sickness. I believe that it is this sadness when compared to the beautiful world of the nightingale that enunciates the pastoral of a poem.

The second characteristic that Norlin points out of a pastoral elegy is that ‘’ There is expressed in almost every dirge, ancient or modern, a feeling of bitter resent-ment against the cruel fate which blasts life in the bud or cuts it off in the fullness of its flower.’’ (Norlin 1911: 306)

This bitter resentment is clearly expressed in stanza 3 of the Ode:

‘’ Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 3)

Keats here, voices out that the nightingale has never known any sorrow and misfortune of human life like he did, and so, he unveils his sourness against a fate that took his brother too quickly.

We see the same bitter resentment in that of Bion of Smyrna in his ‘’Lament for Adonis’’:

“Far thou fliest from me, Adonis. To Acheron thou goest, the loathed and cruel king of death. But I, unhappy, live, for I am a goddess and may not follow thee.’’ (Norlin 1911: 306)

We see something similar concerning Milton’s Lycidas, when Cambridge critic E.M.W Tillyard states that ‘’ at its deepest level, Lycidas is about Milton’s anxieties concerning the possibility of his own premature death.’’ (Tillyard 1930) If we look at the lines of the 6th stanza closely:

‘’Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with th’abhorred shears Ad slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise’’ (Milton’s Lycidas: stanza 6)

We can see the speaker’s regret about not finding ‘fame’ when should, in other words meaning when he is still alive. It is worth noting that Milton was a young poet when writing Lycidas and feared that he would not be recognised for his work if death seized him too soon. That anxiety could be seen as a sort of resentment as well. And it comes close to Norlin’s ‘’bitter resentment’’ theory.

Following the conventions of the pastoral elegy is the ‘’ contrast between the immortality of Nature’s life and the mortality of man’’ Norlin describes this as being ‘’ one of the most natural and one of the most effective features of the dirge, and it is not surprising that it becomes one of the most striking conventions of the modern pastoral elegy.’’ (Norlin 1911: 307)

True to the above, several pastoralists have made this ‘contrast’ in their works. For example, In Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Shepheardes Calender’ (November eclogue), we find Colin’s character doing this distinction through the lines of:

‘’ Whence is it, that the flouret of the field doth fade, And lyeth buryed long in Winters bale; Yet, soone as spring his mantle hath displayde, It floureth fresh, as it should never fayle ?’’ (Spenser’s November eclogue)

In the same line of thinking, Keats makes the contrast between man’s mortality and nature’s immortality through the nightingale’s song in stanza 7:

‘’The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown’’ (Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 7)

Here, Keats implies that the same song he’s hearing has been heard in the past by other generations and so defining men as mortal and the nightingale as immortal.

Lastly to the tradition of the pastoral elegy is the segment of consolation that life goes beyond death. ‘’If the pastoral dirge is mainly an expression of despair, it contains also an element of reassurance, of consolation, in the thought that the dead is not really dead but lives on in another world.’’ (Norlin 1911: 309) Again, one could point out that there isn’t any explicit lyric that shows the ‘element of console’ in Ode to a Nightingale. Yet, if we take the example of Milton’s Lycidas; readers agree by the end of the poem that Lycidas has not really passed away because he will soon rise out of the sea and reach Heaven:

‘’Now Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood.’’ (Milton’s Lycidas : stanza 11)

The speaker makes it sound like Lycidas is going to have a rebirth when he reaches heaven. After all, often is the belief that after death is rebirth. In the same vein Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale can be seen as a reconciliation of life with death when he says that death has never seemed more appealing:

‘’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!’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 6)

It seems that Keats here is using both the nightingale’s song and the out-door- nature as an homage to his death. One could say that the green world of the nightingale is reassuring and thus the speaker is ready to depart in peace. All together, it sounds like consolation and this fits the requirements of the pastoral elegy.

One critic however, refutes the above by asserting that Ode to a Nightingale is a ‘’pastoral failure’’ because of Keats’s ‘’inability to stay inside the protected world when he is left in a state of bewilderment, alone in the unsatisfactory company of its sole self’’ (Toliver 1911:84)
This is seen in the last stanza of the Ode:
‘’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’’ (Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 8)

It is in other words stating that the connection with nature has been broken and so cannot be called pastoral. I shall deny this argument with four lines of reasoning.

Firstly, it is well known that Keats is a poet who often ends his poems with a return to ‘cold reality’
Being an individual who has suffered a lot in his own personal life, it is not surprising that he feels the need to come back to the truth. ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, ‘Lamia’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ are all examples (amongst others) that transcends this return. Thus it would be improper to say that he cannot stay in ‘a protected world’ since this is a normal habitude in his poetry.

Secondly, Keats is not the only one to admit some of the cold realities of the pastoral world. If we take the example of Christopher Marlowe’s ‘’Come live with me and be my love’’ which is known to be a perfect example of the pastoral tradition; the speaker breaks the idealised world of the pastoral by the fourth stanza:

‘’ A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull Fair lined slippers for the cold’’ (Marlowe’s Come live with me and be my love: stanza 4)

Here, the shepherd who seemed to have indulged in an infinite springtime admits that winter shall cease this idealised landscape at some point. Yet, that does not stop the poem from being pastoral. Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘’The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd’’ also recognises that winter is confirmation that the pastoral is an illusion and that one must come to terms to the reality:

‘’To wayward winter reckoning yields, A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall’’ (Ralegh’s The Nymph’s reply to the shepherd: stanza 3)

Lastly, Leo Marx in his work ‘’The Machine in the Garden’’ has classified the pastoral into two categories:

‘’sentimental pastoral and complex pastoral’’ (Marx 1964:25) Sentimental pastoral, he says, is where one simply wallows in its escapism in its jollification of having retreated into nature.

Complex pastoral on the other hand is where the retreat offers an experience often accompanied by an indirect paradox. One of the examples he gives concerning ‘complex pastoral’ is Shakespeare’s ‘’The Tempest’’ in which he describes Prospero’s return as an ‘’effort of mind and spirit.’’ (Marx 1964:70) The point he makes here is that Prospero has benefited from some spiritual experience during his retreat on the island; and came back more profound by the end of the play.

In the last stanza of the Ode we find Keats coming back from his retreat as he asks himself:

‘’In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a dream?’’ (Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale: stanza 8)

Using the ‘complex pastoral’ theory, I can certainly argue that Keats’ refuge in the green world of the nightingale proved to be a spiritual journey. If he was in the beginning ecstatic about the joy that the Nightingale provided; he was soon after disillusioned and felt bitter to eventually accept his fate happily. Despite his return to the world of common reality he has gained some form of inner peace within himself. I, hence maintain that the Ode is not a ‘pastoral failure’.

Drawing to a close, I deduce that Keats has confirmed the pastoral tradition in his Ode to a Nightingale even if it’s not in explicit words like other pastoralists have done. He has shown the ‘beauty’ that his retreat in the bucolic has brought throughout the poem. He went even further by concealing a pastoral elegy within it.

BIBLIOGRPHY: * Literature Online (Lion) : Poetry full text - Keats, John 1795 - 1821 POST HUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS

* George Norlin, ‘’The Conventions of the Pastoral Elegy’’ The American Journal of Philology, Vol 32,No 3, 1911

* Harold E. Toliver, ‘’Pastoral Form and Idea in Some Poems of Marvell’’ , Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol 5, No 1, 1911

* Kimberley Huth, ‘’Come Live With Me and Feed My Sheep: Invitation, Ownership, and Belonging in Early Morn Pastoral Literature’’ Studies in Philology, Vol 108, No 2011

* John Stevenson, ‘’Arcadia Re-Settled: Pastoral Poetry and Romantic Theory’’ Studies in English Literature, Vol 7, No 4,1967

* Barry Weller, ‘’The Epic as Pastoral: Milton, Marvell, and the Plurality of Genre’’ New Literary History, Vol 30, No 1 Poetry and Poetics, 1999

* Paul Alpers, ‘The Eclogue Tradition and the Nature of Pastoral’ National Council of Teachers of English, Vol 34, No 31972

* W.W. Greg, ‘’Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama’’ 1906

* H. W. Garrod , "The Nightingale in Poetry", in, The Profession of Poetry and other Lectures, 1929

* Leo Marx, ‘’The Machine in the Garden’’, Oxford University Press,1964