“Ode to a Nightingale” is set in a verdant wood containing a nightingale audibly in song. The forest and wild nature are a constant presence in the poem, for even as the speaker runs wild in his mental flights, he continues drawing imagery from that landscape. The wine he would drink to “fade away into the forest dim” (20) would itself taste of flowers and green country, and his imagination – which he enters on the bird-like “wings” (33) of poetry – yields the moon and flowers.

While Keats never situates the reader with certainty in daytime or night, darkness features throughout the poem. The forest is described as place of “shadows numberless” (9), “no light” (38), and “embalmed darkness” (43). Moreover, the nightingale’s name is an etymological combination of “night” and “to sing.” Yet Keats keeps the reader unsure of whether the poem takes place in day or night. Nightingales sing during...