Explore Keats' view on the roles of the imagination in:-
             The two poems above have been chosen as they are lyric poems or poems which express the feelings and emotions of the speaker. They were also chosen as both were written in the spring of 1819, later in the life of Keats, and as such, they reflect Keats' view on the role of the imagination, after they had been modified and developed over time.
             To explore Keats' views on the roles of the imagination in these poems, it is important to be mindful of his position as a Romantic Poet. The Romantic view of imagination held that this was not an analytical power, but a synthesising power. The Romantic poets felt there was a harmony between the human mind and the outside world based on an understanding of a plane of one life, running through nature and humanity. The Romantic poets also expressed the visions of their minds which shed light on the real world, transcending nature beyond the images of the material world.
             Individual poets differed in their interpretation of this basic view of the imagination. For Keats, his letter to Benjamin Bailey of twenty second of November 1817 stated:-
             'I am certain of nothing save the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not.'
             This would indicate that Keats felt, that as long as what was experienced was beautiful, it was true, even though the experience may not have been physically experienced by the five senses.
             'Beauty is truth. Truth is Beauty.'
             To the ordinary person, beauty experienced through the five physical senses would not determine truth. To Keats, the role of imagination is as the defining tool of all that is true.
             In 'Ode to Psyche', Keats quickly establishes how his imagination can redefine the rules of the real world:-
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