NCERT Book Class 11 English (Woven Words) Poetry 11 Ode to a Nightingale

Ode to a Nightingale 135

11
Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness
pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had Lethe: in ancient
Greek mythology, an
sunk: imaginary river
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, whose water, when
drunk, was thought
But being too happy in thine happiness,
to make the dead
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, forget their life on
In some melodious plot Earth.

Of beechen green, and shadows Dryad: in stories, a
numberless, female spirit that lives
in a tree.
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.