It was like pouring something beautiful into his ear. That is what the bird said. And the bird was made of sunshine and plumage and bone. His song weighed more than he did, in the end. And in the end, there was the hollow where a nest had been, as if between two roads a man had stopped to wonder, How? At night he dreamed there was no choice. But there had been and he couldn’t choose again. Unless, the wind said. He listened and like a leaf went lighting everywhere. The limbs snapped under his feet. Isn’t it funny how heavy the wind can feel, and then so gentle it can rock you to sleep… How beautiful, the bird said. He said it to the moon, who slipped over the surfaces and vanished and returned.
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The mistake Keats makes is that he assumes, wrongly, that the root of “courage” is the Latin for heart, from which the French get coeur. The idea is that those who have heart are, indeed, courageous. This may be true, that one needs a healthy, even a strong, heart to be courageous, but this idea leaves out the inexplicable. Much of what passes for courage comes not from an act of will on the part of the courageous, but from circumstances quite outside his scope. Perhaps this is why Keats says “his song weighed more than he did, in the end.” It is this extra weight, that which the poet couldn’t wield, that makes for courage. Why the wind feels heavy is anybody’s guess. And yet that may be the truest of the poem’s statements, especially next to the ridiculous notion that the wind, as if an invisible mother, rocks us to sleep.