The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59434 Message #2624085
Posted By: Lonesome EJ
04-May-09 - 03:13 PM
Thread Name: BS: Famous exit lines
Subject: RE: BS: Famous exit lines
When reading Keats' Ode to a Nightingale in college, I was struck by the poem's power, but particularly by the closing lines. The poet hears the call of the nightingale in a solitary woods, and the sound seems to draw his soul out of his body in an exquisite way that suggests a beauty in final release, in the act of dying amid such perfection. And the hint that dying might be only an awakening into a different reality. These are the last lines..
"Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? "