A very interesting and an equally difficult question. I
will attempt an answer, though.
The most basic similarity
in the nature-imagery between the two poems, you mention is the Romantic engagement with
nature in general. This works almost at the level of an ideology with the Romantics. The
natural world in both the poems invites the self into a flight in imagination and the
world of nature is that very locus that promises a glimpse of the transcendental. In
both the poem, we have a kind of 'unseen presence' of a natural object--the West Wind in
Shelley's poem and the song-bird Nightingale in Keats's. They are the natural figures
inspiring a poetic journey in imagination.
The tone and
mood of these two image-patterns in the two poems are completely different. In Shelley's
poem, the central motif is the power of nature, elevated to a mythical level while in
Keats's poem it is a lot more subdued. The natural world may have a prospective opening
onto the metaphysical in the song of Nightingale, but as Keats realizes, the world of
nature is firmly situated in the flux of time and mortality and the tone is thus marked
by a kind of melancholy.
The pestilence-striken multitude
of leaves in Shelley's poem is the general colour of sickness with which Keats paints
his natural world. In the dense forest, there may be an aromatic darkness where the
Nightingale's melodious voice is heard, the note of mystery soon reveals itself to be
marked with the tragic inevitability of death as in the flux of time where youth grows
pale, sick, spectre-thin and then dies. The world of the unseen bird is a promise
alright, but at the same time, it has to be 'forlorn' at the end as one has to come back
to the dreary shades of death. This end is quite radically different from the end of
Shelley's poem where there is a strong motivational quality and a note of optimism in
the famous final pronouncement--"If winter comes, can spring be far
behind?"
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