The Nightingale

Coleridge's poem "The Nightengale" is an excellent example of using words to build imagery for the reader. Initially, the poem introduces a serene setting with an old bridge nestled in the darkness of a dimly lit night. Out of this picturesque quiet setting we meet the subject of the poem, the 'melancholy' Nightingale. Though the author introduces the Nightingale as melancholy, this passage also initiates an interesting discussion of the sentiments of nature. The author challenges whether anything in nature can be melancholy, or whether this is perhaps just a projection of man's own feelings and sorrows. He then proceeds to characterize the Nightingale's song as a lover's call. He uses beautiful language and tons of adjectives to give the reader a diversely worded, grammatically complex composition. "That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates / With fast thick warble his delicious notes" (45)  With a line like this, the author has given us a sense of abruptness and urgency, as well as the consistency and liquidity of the Nightingale's song. With characterizations like this the author makes the Nightingale a conduit of the musical mysticism of nature. Another beautiful word choice, "like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head,"(86) clearly indicates that the author wants the reader and future generations to venerate and value the Nightengale and the musicality of nature's creatures.