In the opening stanza to what things does the speaker compare the ...

[james]

In the opening stanza to what things does the speaker compare the effectof the nightingales song?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

How could the nightingale singing in the poem be the same voice heard inthe ancient world? What point is Keats making about the permanence of nature?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[rekilledagain]

Answer to Question 1

• He compares the effect of the songwhich, he says, makes his heart ache and fills him with a drowsy numbnessto drinking hemlock or some other opiate. The speaker describes the song as taking him Lethe-wards, which is to suggest that the song helps him forget lifes sorrows. The seemingly magical nature of this process is underscored by his comparison of the bird to a Dryad a wood nymph out of Greek mythology.

Answer to Question 2

• All music, all beauty, are part of undying nature. Nature, for Keats, is eternal; the bird is not a mortal creature who will die just as he will die, but is part of a natural world that knows no death.