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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Ode to a Nightingale
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(1820) Poem by *Keats, inspired by the song of a nightingale in his Hampstead garden. The bird's free rapture is contrasted with the realities of everyday life ('Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies'). The thought that the same song has been heard through the centuries (even perhaps lifting the heart of the biblical Ruth, 'when sick for home,/ She stood in tears amid the alien corn') encourages him to dream of the same liberation through his poetry.
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