 Like Percy <unk> Shelley ’ s " To a <unk> " , Keats ’ s narrator listens to a bird song , but listening to the song within “ Ode to a Nightingale ” is almost painful and similar to death . The narrator seeks to be with the nightingale and abandons his sense of vision in order to embrace the sound in an attempt to share in the darkness with the bird . As the poem ends , the trance caused by the nightingale is broken and the narrator is left wondering if it was a real vision or just a dream . The poem reliance on the process of sleeping common to Keats 's poems , and " Ode to a Nightingale " shares many of the same themes as Keats 's Sleep and Poetry and Eve of St. Agnes . This further separates the image of the nightingale 's song from its closest comparative image , the urn as represented in " Ode on a Grecian Urn " . The nightingale is distant and mysterious , and even disappears at the end of the poem . The dream image emphasizes the <unk> and <unk> of the poem . These elements make it impossible for there to be a complete self @-@ identification with the nightingale , but it also allows for self @-@ awareness to <unk> throughout the poem , albeit in an altered state . 
