Page 162 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit
P. 162
“Ode to a Nightingale”
by John Keats, pages 43-45
Vocabulary
opiate – a narcotic
draught – a mug-full
verdurous – green, forest-like
requiem – song of sorrow and remembrance
plaintive – mournful
1. To who or what is the speaker addressing in the poem?
2. In the third stanza, the speaker announces, “Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and
dies.” What other poet presented in this anthology shares the speaker’s idea that youth and
innocence dies with age and experience?
3. How will the poet follow the nightingale, according to the fourth stanza?
4. In Stanza VII, find and record an example of an allusion.
5. How does the speaker react to the bird’s flight at the end of the poem?
6. How does the tone of this poem differ from the tone found in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To
A Skylark?”
S-48
