A comparative study of 'Ode to a Nightingale and 'TO a Skylark'

                   A Comparative study of ‘ Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘To a       Skylark’

 ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by Keats and ‘To a Skylark’ by Shelley are the two masterspieces of English romantic poetry of the Romantic Revival. Let us make   a comparative study of the two poems , that is a study of the similarity and the dissimilarity of the  two poems. These two poems are excellent romantic poems written by the two great romantic poets of England. Both the poems are about the song of birds.

But while ‘To a Skylark’ is about the music of skylark’ Ode two a Nightingale’ is about the music of a nightingale. To a Skylark ,’Shelley expresses his overwhelming delight at the music of an invisible skylark and the poet gets carried away with the music and we get the feeling that the poet is lost in the music. In  ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ also Keats expresses his tremendous delight at the music of the nightingale and he feels transported to the world of romantic bliss on the invisible wings of poetic imagination. If ‘To a skylark’ is a poem of flight into the world of romantic bliss, ‘Ode two a Nightingale is a poem of flight into and return from the world of romantic bliss, ‘that is , the bliss of romantic imagination.

In the poem ‘To a Skylark’ Shelley looks upon the skylark as a symbol of pure joy and unalloyed ecstasy .And this  image of sweet and rapturous music of the bird has been developed through a series of similes and metaphors and pictorial images. Shelley here idealises the music of the skylark and contrasts the pains and agonies of human life with the unalloyed ecstasy of the bird. The poem ‘ Ode to a Nightingale’ ends on a note of confusion between dream and wakefulness ,imagination and reality and fact and fantasy. Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ does not end such on a note of disillusion rather on a note of romantic longing for the perfect unbounded joy and ecstasy of the skylark.

In both the poems we see the images and metaphors but Keats’ uses  of images is mostly concrete and sensuous very much within the reach of the common experiences of the common readers and therefore very much appealing to them. But the images used in ‘To a Skylark are mostly ethereal, delicate and refined bordering on unsubstantial. Actually, there are many such ethereal images and figures of speech touching our fancy in ‘To a Skylark.’

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale ,’ Keats uses mostly concrete and sensuous images. The phase ‘purple strained mouth’ is a richly sensuous phrase. It gives us an image of red  wine  touching the lips and making them red. It’s a highly tickling expression appealing to our sense of taste. The  sixth stanza of this ode is the most sensuous stanza ever written by Keats. Already transported to the ideal shadowy bower of romantic bliss, the poet can recognize the different flowers not through their scent. The stanza overwhelms our sense of small.

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is replete with / interspersed with classical references. It is very much Hellenic in spirit. We hardly see any such classical reference in ‘To a Skylark’ by Shelley.  Both   the poems, however , have uniform stanzaic pattern. But while ‘Ode to a Nightingale   consists of five stanzas. But the differences is : while ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is a lyric of eight stanzas having the rhyme scheme  ab  ab  ab  cde  cde, ‘ ‘To a Skylark’ is a lyric of twenty one stanzas having the rhyme scheme ababb.

Thus in point of originality of thought and expression both ‘To a Skylark’ and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ are unparalled. We can’t   overestimate the one and underestimate the other .Both are  superb lyrics about birds having some similar and dissimilar features. Both are immortal works of art of the immortal artists.