Hymn to the Nightingale One must be armed with a little knowledge of Greek mythology before tackling Keats; Hyperion, for example, is full of allusions to Milton's Paradise Lost. After reading and rereading Ode on a Grecian Urn I decided it would be best to just comment on Ode to a Nightingale (because I'm baffled by Keats). I found it very difficult to understand. You can't just sit down and read Keats like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Keats must be read with great care; otherwise you will miss his point. I only pray that my reading and my poor mind do some sort of justice to Keats' monumental work: "Hymn to the Nightingale." The poem begins with that of Keats, with his denunciation of humanity. It is filled with "aches and pains of drowsy numbness" and a feeling of forgetfulness as if "I have drunk hemlock." Life has brought him to a state of oblivion and he is disconcerted to find a "light-winged Dryad [Nightingale] of the trees" who "is too happy in your happiness" and sings "of summer with full ease." Keats would like to join the Nightingale's song but can only do so through death, but even death is painful. Keats wants no more pain that life has to offer, so he speaks of a "vintage [wine] that's been chilled a long time... With bubbles winking at the brim" and hopes that "he might drink, and leave the world invisible, and vanish with you into the dark forest." With wine Keats hopes to "fade away... [from] the weariness, fever, and agitation" of life. Man's drink is his only escape from this life but then he writes that he does not want to unite with nature and "fly towards" the nightingale "wagon from" wine but of poetic imagination. Because too much wine would bring pain in the morning and only stop it for a while. Once the drug has run its final course, the pain would be greater than before. If only this world could vanish so that he could join the world of nature where he could be "too happy in your happiness." He wants to leave this world: "May I drink and leave the invisible world", he wants to "Fade away, dissolve and forget all" everything.