The first and foremost quality of his odes is their unity of impression. The major odes of Keats “Ode to Nightingale”, Ode on Grecian Urn, and Ode on Melancholy have a common subject and time. In Ode to Nightingale” Keats wants imaginative participation in the untroubled natural life of the bird.
He wants to make happiness last forever .The poem ends with Keats finding no solution to his conflict. But he knows that art offer a type of permanence..In the seventh stanza of “Ode to Nightingale “the Nightingale becomes a symbol of art. Transitory human happiness is given permanence in a different sense by being embodied in art.
Ode on Grecian Urn, takes up the thought of the seventh stanza of Ode to Nightingale. Mortal beauty is passing away but not those of art. Ode on Grecian Urn is much more objective and descriptive than Ode to Nightingale. The Grecian Urn is taken as a type of ending beauty much discussed. Beauty is truth; truth beauty is all that Keats wants us to know on earth.
The truth is great and shall prevail. By truth Keats means that which has lasting values. Keats is saying that beauty is truer than love, pleasure and other forms of values because they pass away while beauty can be embodied in a lasting form. In Ode to Melancholy. Keats recognizes that sadness is inevitable after movements of intense sensuous happiness. He says:
She dwells with beauty
Beauty that must die
Melancholy springs from the transience of joy. Ode to Autumn is the most perfect in form and detail of all the Keats Odes. Here Keats returns to ordinary human experience. The season of ripeness and fulfillment is seen as through it quite final. Keats asserts that autumn has its own beauty and joy. It would be idle to try to turn the odes into great philosophical poems. They came to conclusion and make no synthesis yet they are not merely decorated and descriptive poems as part of them appear to be.
The deep conflict from which they spring is both emotional and intellectual. They are in fact supreme examples of “Negative capability” when a man is capable of being in uncertainties without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. The Odes are not speculative.
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