Conflict between Transience and Permanence in Keats' Odes

  Keats’ Dramatic Quality: Odes Show Inner Conflict between Art & Life, Pain & Pleasure, Reality & Imagination, Transience & Permanence   John Keats was a great poet of Romantic age in English literature. It is evident from his poetry that he was an ardent lover of beauty and beautiful objects of nature. Particularly, when we study his odes, the first thing which allures the readers is their dramatic quality. By drama, we essentially mean tension or conflict. Nevertheless, Keats’ odes are a running commentary on his poetic state of mind which always suffered from the pulls of reality on one side and those of imagination from the other. He seems to linger between the bitter realities of life (Where but to think is to be full of sorrows) and the happy world of the nightingale which has remained absolutely untainted by the fever and fret of the real world. Hence, we may proclaim unhesitatingly that Keats’ odes are a record of dramatic quality.   A look at Keats’