The Nightingale

There seems to be contrast of joy and sorrow throughout this poem.  In the first stanza, the speaker refers to the bird as "melancholy" and then declares that there is nothing melancholy in nature.  He contradicts himself again in the following line, “But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced / With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, / Or slow distemper, or neglected love”.  The speaker also seems to be creating a contrast between humans and nature.  I interpreted his contrast to mean that humans are allowed to express sorrow, but nature is not.  By the same token, we as humans should not rely on nature to create our happiness, or project our feelings on to nature.