Ode

This article is about the form of lyrical verse. For other uses, see Ode (disambiguation).

Ode (from ancient Greek ὠδή) is a type of lyrical stanza. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist. It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.

Originally Greek odes were for dancing and were accompanied by musical instruments. Usually they addressed the deity. Gradually they became known as personal lyrical compositions whether sung (with or without musical instruments) or merely recited (always with accompaniment). The primary instruments used were the aulos and the lyre (the latter of which was the most revered instrument to the Ancient Greeks). The written ode, as it was practiced by the Romans, returned to the/ L E2 lyrical form of the Lesbian lyricists.

There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular. Pindaric odes follow the form and style of Pindar. Horatian odes follow conventions of Horace; the odes of Horace deliberately imitated the Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon. Odes by Catullus, as well as other poetry of Catullus, was particularly inspired by Sappho. Irregular odes are rhyming, but they do not employ the three-part form of the Pindaric ode nor the two- or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode.

English ode

The earliest odes in the English language were probably Edmund Spenser's Epithalamium and Prothalamium

In the 17th century the most important original odes in English are those of Abraham Cowley odes which had irregular patterns of line lengths and rhyme schemes, though they were iambic. The principle of Cowley's Pindariques was based on a misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice but was widely imitated nonetheless, with notable success by John Dryden.

In the 18th century, the fashion for Pindaric odes fades, though Thomas Gray, does compose a few: The Progress of Poesy and The Bard.

During the Romantic period the ode was resurrected. It becomes a lyrical stanza in praise of an object, or dedicated to someone, which captured the poet's interest. The most common rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE.

William Wordsworth revised, The Pindarick of Cowley, for one of his very finest poems, the Intimations of Immortality ode; irregular odes were also written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote odes with regular stanza patterns. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, written in fourteen line terza rima stanzas, is a major poem in the form.

Perhaps the greatest odes of the period were Keats's Five Great Odes of 1819 which included Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, and To Autumn.

Comparatively few major odes have been written in English since the Romantic period. A major exception is the fourth verse of the poem For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon which is often known as "The Ode to the Fallen" or more simply as "The Ode".

W.H. Auden wrote 'Ode', in opposition to the reality of war. In an interview Auden stated that he had intended to title the poem 'My Silver Age' in mockery of the supposedly imperial Golden age.

Notable practitioners of the ode

• Thomas Gray
• John Keats
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• William Wordsworth
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Pablo Neruda

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gosse, Edmund (1911). "Ode". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• 'Ode' - JPiC Forum For Writers Glossary Term of the Day
• "Ode" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.