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In one of his letters, Keats had compared human life to a ‘‘large Mansion of Many Apartments”. The first chamber is the infant or thoughtless chamber. The second is the chamber of Maiden-thought where one tends to become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere. But amidst all the delight one’s vision into the heart and nature of Man gets sharpened. One becomes acutely conscious of the misery, heartbreak, pain, sickness and oppression ’ one is wrapped in the mystery of it all, without seeing the balance of good and evil.
The great Odes of Keats show a growth towards equilibrium in the poet’s mind. Keats deals with the problems of death and immortality, transience and permanence, the coexistence of pleasure and pain in his Odes. In each ode, he tries to arrive at a resolution in his search for permanence. It is only in the ode To Autumn that he achieves the perfect equilibrium of mind, that calm acceptance of mutability and change which is a sign of psychological maturity. The odes to us Become a psychological document n that they dramatize some basic conflicts inherent, not only in an individual mind, but in all mankind.