As a group, the Odes show the reader a centralised experience. They contemplate and demonstrate to the reader the absolute and indescribable intensity that is endured procures pain at its core. They aim to show how Keats experiences the world around him and how he aims at constructing this world for himself. These two are polar opposites and show to great extent the profound and deep intensity with which Keats constructs his poetry. In doing this, he unveils a deeply divided self. The odes, as Hollindale (1998:57) states, show this to a magnificent effect as Keats rejects notions of diminished consciousness and turns away from the "escapist consolations of death, narcotic slumber, drugged unconsciousness and forgetfulness". Keats appeared as a poet who, through his art, escaped the "sordid and disturbing environment of nineteenth century life". In its place he created and evolved a picturesque world, "painted in colours and felt intensely through the senses" (Ford 1945:32). Keats's poetic strength did not lie merely in unfolding vast narratives of Gods, but in his ability to record with "thin skin sensitivity" (Watts 1988:15) these heightened moments of personal experience. .
As readers, we can see these strengths brilliantly manifested within the poetry and that Keats has a preoccupation with the impossibility of possessing reality. This theme runs directly through the core of his Odes of 1819. Ode to a Nightingale expresses Keats's almost unbearable happiness induced by its song. The poetry itself is a catalyst for Keats's obvious intentions between two opposing escapisms- into unconsciousness and into a painful acceptance of intense life- is replayed within the poetry with immediate effect. He embraces the connection between his heightened imagination and life, displaying a clear understanding of the transitory nature of life and that; essentially, moments in time cannot be eternal.