Keats' desire to live through "Poesy"

John Keats’ poem, “Ode to Nightingale” grapples with the idea of death. Keats envies the nightingale because she is an “immortal bird.” Keats muses upon death’s tender grip stealing him away from the “weariness, fever, and the fret” of life, yet he also is in love with life. He has been “half in love with easeful death” and “called him soft names” but ultimately Keats does love the sensations of life. After all, through living Keats can experience the nightingale’s eternal chirp. Keats writes in a dream – like state where he is not completely conscious. For example, the poem closes with Keats questioning “Do I wake or sleep?” The diction in the poem with the allusion to Bacchus and the repeating of the word “wine” suggest that narrator is in this dream-like state induced by alcohol. Yet, Keats waves this theory away saying he only thinks of letting Bacchus’ “chariot” his “pards.” Instead Keats wants his artistic vision and poetry to follow the nightingale as he says, “Away! Away! For I will flee to thee.” “On the viewless wings of Poesy.” Perhaps Keats wants his writing to be eternal because he knows his body will eventually be nothing but “grey hairs” but his “Poesy” has the opportunity to keep the nightingale’s call company through the ages. Only then can Keats be like the bird that is “not born for death.”