 From the late 1960s onward , many of the Yale School of critics describe the poem as a reworking of John Milton 's poetic diction , but they argued that poem revealed that Keats lacked the ability of Milton as a poet . The critics , Harold Bloom ( 1965 ) , Leslie <unk> ( 1973 ) , Paul Fry ( 1980 ) , John <unk> ( 1981 ) and Cynthia Chase ( 1985 ) , all focused on the poem with Milton as a progenitor to " Ode to a Nightingale " while ignoring other possibilities , including Shakespeare who was emphasised as being the source of many of Keats 's phrases . Responding to the claims about Milton and Keats 's shortcomings , critics like R. S. White ( 1981 ) and Willard Spiegelman ( 1983 ) used the Shakespearean echoes to argue for a multiplicity of sources for the poem to claim that Keats was not trying to respond just Milton or escape from his shadow . Instead , " Ode to a Nightingale " was an original poem , as White claimed , " The poem is richly saturated in Shakespeare , yet the <unk> are so profound that the Ode is finally original , and wholly <unk> " . Similarly , Spiegelman claimed that Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream had " flavored and <unk> the later poem " . This was followed in 1986 by Jonathan Bate claiming that Keats was " left enriched by the voice of Shakespeare , the ' immortal bird ' " . 
