Ode to a Nightingale
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
As he listens to the nightingale and enters a dark, imaginary world, an element of a meditative ode. The narrator begins to feel that death is the best way to escape from the miserable life that he lives. Keats' tragedy filled life causes him to see the world in the pessimistic point of view shown here.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
However, he is brought out of this world when he says the word “forlorn,” and realizes that everything was only fantasy. Keats is forced to return to the real world after this journey, similar to the fact that he must return to his miserable life once he finishes writing a poem.