Keats sat under a plum tree in Hampstead and wrote this ode about wanting to dissolve into the bird's song, to escape mortality, to cease upon the midnight with no pain. He was twenty-three, watching his brother die of tuberculosis, knowing the disease might come for him too. The movement from drowsy numbness through ecstatic flight to cold return is perfectly managed. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death. The bird flies away. The vision fades. Was it a vision, or a waking dream? The silence answers nothing.