A burning forehead and a parching tongue."
He had to accept his lot and pretend to see some advantage in it as he did in that of the youth on the urn:
"More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young."
The poem is the song of unsatisfied desires. Keats, frustrated in his love, had one resource, to make poetry and create beauty out of his sorrow. To the future he too would be like that lover created by an ancient artist, panting for love ever young. The poem has such great appeal because it strikes a note in us all.
In the Ode to the Nightingale we also see evidence of his love sadness because of Fanny. He expresses a wish to go away with the bird from scenes
"Where youth grows pale, and spectre thin, and dies;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,