 Responding to this emphasis on pleasure , Albert Guerard , Jr. argues that the poem contains a " longing not for art but a free <unk> of any kind . The form of the poem is that of progression by association , so that the movement of feeling is at the mercy of words evoked by chance , such words as fade and forlorn , the very words that , like a bell , toll the <unk> back to his sole self . " However , Fogle points out that the terms Guerard emphasizes are " <unk> translations " and that Guerard <unk> Keats 's aesthetic . After all , the acceptance of the loss of pleasure by the end of the poem is an acceptance of life and , in turn , of death . Death was a constant theme that permeated aspects of Keats poetry because he was exposed to death of his family members throughout his life . Within the poem , there are many images of death . The nightingale experiences a sort of death and even the god Apollo experiences death , but his death reveals his own divine state . As Perkins explains , " But , of course , the nightingale is not thought to be literally dying . The point is that the deity or the nightingale can sing without dying . But , as the ode makes clear , man cannot — or at least not in a visionary way . " 
