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The poetry of Keats embodies a deep undercurrent of sound and silence. They alternate in a rhythmic, and recurring pattern of images. Keats conceives sound and silence as eternal polarities interacting constantly for a greater integration. His creative process is a continual vertical movement caught between the dialectics of life and life beyond. These mighty opposites find their ultimate fusion in a higher harmony. The paradox between transience and permanence is most aesthetically resolved. Beauty as the enduring idea behind all process and appearance has been propounded in a timeless art of virile imagery.

The sequential progression of the images of sound and silence creates a deep symbolic significance. The intense vibra颅tion of life is at once overtaken by vast stretch of silence. Sound signifies the jolly bustle of life, while silence symbolizes its tragic transience into the unknown. The abundance of life is followed by a deep sense of void. Keats鈥� poetry abounds in references to dance, song and music juxtaposed with deep dark nights, silent bowers, soundless wilderness. Thus his entire poetic process is from sound to silence; from existence to extinction or from time to the timeless;

Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth,
O for a beaker full of the warm South
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
with beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

The phrase 鈥榝ade away鈥� assumes a deeper connotation. There is an intense desire to evolve from fragmentation ofbeing to fullness of becoming. An urge to grow into a greater awareness and fade away into a soundless melody. This is to dematerialize himself from corporal concreteness to dimensionless abstraction. The fleshy frame or the entire solidity of body fading away into ethereal nothingness. The sound of existence finding its way into a fuller freedom of silence. Expansion of consciousness beyond experience. Transcending the temporal confines and reaching out into a greater enlargement. A step out into the infinity. Sound blossoming into a song of silence.

Keats鈥� passionate involvement in the richness and variety of life is followed by a sudden sense of repulsion. This love-hate ambivalence is the keynote of Keatsian poetics. There is a continual and constant movement of sound flowing into silence. Song, dance and wine are not self-sufficient. They merge into a greater reality. Fading away into dim forest of silence is their ultimate finality. The poet鈥檚 acceptance of life is provisional and he chooses to stay at the world of sense-gratification for a shorter spell. There is a relentless pull towards a higher experience. An inevitable drift towards a totality. Keats鈥� contract with life is conditional. He cannot afford to remain too long where 鈥淏eauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes鈥�. The poet is painfully alive to the fleeting sense of beauty and deeply desires the silence of a total forgetfulness Thus sound and silence are the metaphoric equivalents of an irreversible process of existence and evanescence. He conceives silence as the unknown, the intimation of the immortality and his aspiration is for 鈥渢he unheard, unravished, unwearied鈥�.

The song of the Nightingale is the enthralling melody of sound. It captivates him totally. His entire being is involved in it and yet ironically he wishes to go beyond the song,

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Keats refers to the 鈥減assing night鈥� and the starry sky. The song of the nightingale pierces through the deep night and spreads far into the open space of the sky. Sound and silence interpenetrate deeply. The silent night is vibrating with the sound. The starry sky is aglow with the song. The poet鈥檚 view of the world is enriched. His sense of beauty is further deepened. Even death is very passionately wished for.

Keats is obsessed with the ugly sound existence and craves for the melodious sound of the nightingale. Even such a thrilling and profound song fails to bind him to a world of everyday existence. So he aspires for death a total silence. The song of the bird induces a death consciousness. Keats is torn between the extremes of sound and silence. Beyond sound there is silence. Silence flows in and pervades the sound. Thus sound and silence are in mutual opposition and harmony.

It is a fundamental human fallacy to perceive division in time. But Keats鈥� conception of time is total. The whole silence of the past flows into the present. The present into the unknown and unending future.

Already with thee; tender is the night
And haply the queen-Moon is on her throne
Clustered around by all her starry Fays.

Keats鈥� sense of sound and silence assumes a profound significance in his ode 鈥淥n a Grecian Urn鈥�. The Urn represents the eloquence of silence. The whole bustle of bygone Greek life comes alive in rich imagery of sound. The contrast between past and present is brought out in vivid images of sound and silence:

Thou still unravish鈥檇 bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Bride is the symbol of sensual pleasures and celebration. The wedding ceremony and the whole merry-making of the past event melts away into the 鈥渜uietness鈥� of the present. The Urn is the child of silence but it unleashes a whole lot of emotional bustle in the eyes of the beholder.

Keats is not content with the drab existential monotony. He ventures into the unknown and the unheard. He takes an adventurous plunge into the beyond and waits for a greater truth. There is an aching anticipation for a total reality. His sense of sound is not self-sufficient, he aspires for more than which is unheard.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

Keats tries to transcend the time and tonal limitations. He moves away from sensual sound to the unbounded sound of spirit. There is a struggle to escape from human smallness and participate in an all-pervading melody of silence. To go beyond sound and get lost in the vastness and immensity of silence. The piper on the Urn is singing unto eternity. Keats redeems art from the tyranny of time. Life does not admit of any permanence. The sensual song soon fades away. But there is an eternal now in art. What Keats could not realise in life he achieves in art. Thus he is able to overcome the painful sense of impermanence.

Forlorn; the very word is like a bell
To toll me from thee to my sole self;

The toll of the bell disintegrates the dream. Keats is to his 鈥渟ole self鈥�. The bell is a grim reminder of existential obligation. It measures life in terms of time. Now the poet is awakened to the realities of existence and alerted to the commit颅ment to life. He is from a mystic ecstasy to a hard fact existence. From timeless bliss of silence to mundane sound of everyday living.

Keats is not a drop-out from this grim business of living. His problem is how to reconcile with transience that lies at the heart of existence and how to grow out of this agonising aware颅ness of impermanence. His enquiry is on a higher frequency. He sets out to explore the possibilities for permanence. There are cross currents in the very stream of human life and there is a deep dichotomy in the very structure of existence. His basic concern is how to get out of this mutability and steal a March over this fleeting time.

The interplay of sound and silence and their mutual follow-颅on creates the essential rhythm of life. It is neither a stylistic device nor a structural dialectic but a synthetic vision of life. Keats always tries to fall in step with the mighty flow of time and get the better of it. There is no meek submission to the avalanche of existence. On the contrary it is a brave escape into the unknown with a rich and surer sense of life. Thus there is a symphony of sound and silence. An intimate integration of the moment with the permanent.