Yesterday evening, I ran a quiz for friends on Zoom. One of the questions I posed was who wrote these lines:

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease”.

The answer is, of course John Keats, the poem in question being “Ode to a Nightingale”.

Along with “Autumn”, “Ode to a Nightingale” is one of my favourite poems, written by a poet who died at a tragically young age.

You can find a wonderful reading of “Ode to a Nightingale”, read by Stephen Fry here,

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