Poems

Ode:

• Poem that is written for an occasion or on a particular subject: a person, an event, or something that’s not even present.
• More formal and serious as a form than other forms of poetry.
• Modern odes: sarcastic poems. Ex: they can talk about velcro and vegetables.
• 3 types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular.

Keats’ odes:

Ode on Indolence (1819): “One morn before me were three figures seen,”

Ode to Psyche (1819): “O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung”

Ode to a Nightingale (1819):  “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains”

 Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819): “THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,”

Ode on Melancholy (1819): “NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist”

To Autumn (1819): “SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,”

Themes:

• The Inevitability of Death:

Poems:   

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”:  “Of godlike hardship tells me I must die

Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”

 “Sleep and Poetry”:

“Smoothed for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death
Of luxury”

·         The Contemplation of Beauty:

Poems:  “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “ A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme”

 “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again”: “Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.”

• Passing of time:

Poems: “To Autumn”:

later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

“Ode to a Nightingale”:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

• Love

Poems:  "La Belle Dame sans Merci": “I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful – a faery’s child”

"Bright Star": “Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,”