Critical Analysis Of The Poem Wings Of Poetry

The first three stanzas as well as the first four lines of the fourth stanza constitute the lyrical voice’s complaint of his world, focusing on the desire to get away from such an oppressing reality (“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget / What thou among the leaves hast never known,” (ll. 21-22)) by Imagination, by what is called here “the wings of Poetry”. However, from line 35 to 78 the speaker is no longer surrounded by that desolated world; he is now in another dimension, reality or place his own imagination led him to, this is why, at the end of the poem, he is uncertain about the veracity of this new reality: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music – do I wake or sleep?” (ll. 79-80). He tells us he “cannot see”

Finally, the poetic voice comes back to reality, to his reality. The word “forlorn” (ll. 70) triggers off this arrival since the gap which separates deciduous life from evergreen life is “forlorn”. The poet, as a human being and a particular representation of Beauty and Love will die one day (the condition of the poet as a living creature makes him along with the nightingale deciduous) and they will not be remembered any more, however, his voice, his poetry and his ideas, as presences in this world, will remain evergreen forever (the immortal condition of the nightingale is also applicable to the poet’s voice) and will remain throughout time. Negative Capability, as an imaginative operation of the mind which enables the poet to hold opposites, allows the poetic voice to tolerate the two opposites the text deals with: deciduous elements and evergreen elements; as an imaginative operation of the mind which enables the poet to be open to the external world and to identify himself empathically with what surrounds him (the nightingale), it lets him enter into another reality where “forlorn” does not exist, just because of the song of the nightingale, which is immortal so he wishes his voice, as a poet, would be immortal as