Summary

The poem opens with the speaker’s declaration of heartache and a feeling like he’s been sedated and immersed in the mythological river of forgetfulness. The speaker, hearing a nightingale’s song in the forest, is overcome by happiness inspired by the bird’s own. He compares the nightingale to the spirit of the tree from which the bird sings its summer song with both vigor and ease.

The speaker cries out for wine that would evoke pastoral country scenes, the “warm south” (15) of Europe, and the waters of a mythical spring said to bring poetic inspiration. With bubbles effervescing at the top of the cup and his mouth stained purple, he would drink and fade away with the bird into the darkness of the forest, forgetting the human pain that birds never experience: the fatigue, sickness, and worry of human life, where...