John Keats is known for his vibrant use of imagery in his poetry. At least twenty paintings have been rendered as a result of his expressive images. In Ode to a Nightingale, he uses synesthetic imagery at the beginning by combining the senses normally experienced separately to unify unrelated objects or feelings, but as he nears the end he stops making connections. This helps the reader make a distinction between dreams and reality, which is a constant theme in Keats's works. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The poem begins by explaining how the narrator is heartbroken and is thinking of options to kill the feeling. He is considering hemlock, a poisonous drink made from the herb, and drinking from the River Lethe, a river in Hades from which souls who would soon be reincarnated drank to forget their past lives. By choosing the latter of the two, the narrator would have to kill himself, and neither seems appealing. Then the narrator hears the music of a nightingale and, like a drug itself, dulls his senses in his special world with the bird. He then uses synesthesia, “In some melodious texture / Of green beech,” (8-9) to combine sound and sight. Normally a green beech tree would not be described as "melodious", but Keats does this to let the reader know that he is heading towards a dream. By combining the two senses, the reader is made aware of the connection between dreams and reality. The second stanza presents a request for release from his pain by means of finely aged wine. By drinking "a full glass of the warm south" (15) he hopes that this will allow him to escape from his world into the nightingale's forest kingdom. Here, Keats's use of synesthesia is the narrator savoring an image, "Flora and the green country"; an activity, “Dance”; a sound, "Provençal song"; and a state of mind, “cheerfulness.” Even a visual state, "tanned", is combined with an emotional state, "cheerfulness". Once the glass is mentioned, there is something to taste, but it is instead replaced with a temperature, "hot"; and the "South" area. By combining senses that would otherwise not be united, the reader is led to believe that the narrator is still in a daydream, slowly drifting away from reality. The third stanza is a reflection of Keats's experience with illness and disappointment. The narrator wants to "Fade away and forget altogether / What you among the leaves never knew" (21-22). He assumes that the nightingale has never encountered the "weariness, fever, and agitation" (23) of life and wishes very much to be as naïve and invincible as the bird. The fourth stanza begins with the cry "Go!" The narrator says that he "will not [be] carried in the chariot by Bacchus," (32) the god of wine. He refuses wine and prefers to travel with his imagination on the "wings of Poetry" (33). Now he dreams that it is night and he is with the nightingale in the sky, but he cannot see any light or hear anything. As he begins to realize that by giving up suffering, he slowly gives up his physical senses as well. The narrator recognizes the lack of light, or lack of vision, and immediately mentions the breeze blowing (38-39). He combined these senses to describe the light flowing through the leaves of the nightingale tree moved by the wind. The reader can see that by unifying the senses of sight and touch, the narrator is still making the connection between the dream state and reality. In the fifth stanza, he has lost all senses and everything seems foreign to him. He lets his imagination tell him what is around him, when in reality it may not be. Since his senses are useless, he must rely on his brain for memories and imagination for.