Author Question: What are the worldly troubles and sorrows the speaker wishes to escape? What will be an ideal ... (Read 38 times)

tichca · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

What are the worldly troubles and sorrows the speaker wishes to escape?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why does the speaker desire wine in stanza two?

What will be an ideal response?

cascooper22 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The world is a place of weariness, fever, and fret (line 23), where people become sickpalsy shakes a few (line 25), grow oldyouth grows pale, and spectre-thin (line 26), and have too many sad thoughts on their mindsbut to think is to be full of sorrow (line 27). As youth fades, moreover, so do beauty (Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes) and love.

Answer to Question 2

Because it would help him to withdraw mentally from the world and get lost in the song of the nightingale. Note that he doesnt just want any wine, moreover: he wants one whose taste would bring to mind the colorful flowers of the countrysidespecific ally the countryside of the warm Mediterranean countries (the warm south), which he imagines as being full of dance and song and joy. As he has compared the bird to a mythical wood nymph, so he compares the wine he desires to the waters of the Hippocrene, the sacred fountain of mythology, which, the Greeks believed, inspired the writing of poetry.