"O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts!

"

One of the most striking things about the odes in terms of sensations is the language used. In all his poems, but
especially in the odes, John Keats uses highly mimetic language to build upon whatever sensual idea he attempts to
portray. Through this collection of poetry, he opens our heart to a world of sensory feelings and keeps us away from
the worldly enjoyment by illustrating the idea of a transient existence.

Ode writing is known as a lyrical narrative with a serious subject composed in an elevated style. It tends to focus on
one purpose and theme and its tone and manners are typically elaborated, dignified and imaginative. It uses imagery,
metaphors and similes to explore the object’s potential glory. It is usually formal in nature and directed to an event,
a thing or a person that is not present.

The lyrics can be on various themes; marriage hymns, a single incident, one unit of emotion, a single individual,
something unified or scattered. More specifically one consolidate topic is taken as the subject matter of odes. Nature
is a prominent element in such poems. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict form,
were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium by Edmund Spenser. Spenser’s view highlights several themes including
the pastoral and the sea, rivers and streams as several lines are devoted to the beauty of nature. Marriage and
companionship as well as mythology and Christian folklore, the adoration of the bride from the perspective of the
groom are some of the main subject matters that circulates in his work.

The idea of the epithalamion, or wedding song, was not new with Spenser. Poets as early as Sappho, the Greek
woman who wrote in the early sixth century B.C.E., composed such poems, as did many others, such as Pindar and
Catullus, in Greek and Latin, in the intervening years. Each poet naturally brought his or her own vision and style to
the ode writing. The first was established by Pindar, a Greek poet, who modeled his odes on the choral songs of
Greek drama. They were encomiums, i.e., written to give public praise, usually to athletes who had been successful
in the Olympic games. Catullus’ pining odes of unrequited yet celebrated love for his secret amour, the wife of a
Roman senator, are among the most painfully romantic works in ancient literature.

In the 17th century, the most important original odes in English are by Abraham Cowley. Cowley based the
principle and themes of his Pindariques on an apparent misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice but,
nonetheless, others widely imitated his style, with notable success by John Dryden.

The Romantic meditative ode was developed from these varying traditions. It tended to combine the stanzaic
complexity of the irregular ode with the personal meditation of the Horatian ode, usually dropping the emotional
restraint of the Horatian tradition. However, the typical structure of the new form can best be described, not by
traditional stanzaic patterns, but by its development of subject matter. There are usually three elements: the
description of a particularized outer natural scene, an extended meditation, which the scene stimulates, and which
may be focused on a private problem or a universal situation or both, or the occurrence of an insight or vision, a
resolution or decision, which signals a return to the scene originally described, but with a new perspective created by
the intervening meditation.

Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode," and Shelley's "Ode to the West
Wind," are examples, and Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," while Horatian in its uniform stanzaic form, reproduces the
architectural format of the meditative soliloquy, or, it may be, intimate colloquy with a silent auditor.

If the style and structure of ode is to be considered throughout the history, odes fall in three categories namely
Pindaric, Horatian and irregular odes formed by Greek poet Pindar, Latin poet Horace and English poet Abraham
Cowley respectively. Pindar patterned his complex stanzas in a triad: the formal opening strophe, having the
complex metrical structure, and antistrophe, which mirrors the opening, had the same metrical form as strophe; the
concluding epode had another. Examples of Pindaric odes include ‘‘Ode on Intimation of Immortality’’ from
Recollections of Early Childhood by William Words Worth as well as Thomas Gray's ‘‘The Progress of Poesy’’.

Horatian odes are meditative, intimate and informal as they do not follow any strict rules and focused on simple
subject matter pleasing to senses. The Horatian ode employed uniform stanzas, each with the same metrical pattern,
and tended generally to be more personal, more meditative, and more restrained. Keats' "Ode to Autumn" and
Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" are Horatian odes.

As the ode developed in England, poets modified the Pindaric form to suit their own purposes and also turned to
Roman models. Abraham Cowley introduced the "irregular ode," which imitated the Pindaric style and retained the
serious subject matter, but opted for greater freedom. It abandoned the recurrent strophic triad and instead permitted
each stanza to be individually shaped, resulting in stanzas of varying line lengths, number of lines, and rhyme
scheme. It addresses an intense emotion at the onset of a personal crisis or celebrates an object or image that leads to
revelation as used in Keats’ ‘‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’’, P.B. Shelley’s ‘‘Ode to the West Wind’’ and ‘‘Dejection : An
Ode’’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

When it comes to the use of enormous imagery, Keats is the one considered as the king of ode writing as his odes
are exceedingly sensuous, their images are concrete, which makes his odes have many layers of images, each
reflecting the other until the internal organic quality of one of the odes is like that of a room of mirrors. Keats' poetry
unfolds the richness of experience in a different way from the other Romantics as his poetry probes beyond the mere
verbal level of language to a level where the connotations of words become highly significant resulting in the
synaesthetic quality of the imagery in the odes. Very few poems of the rest of the Romantics have the power of
synaesthesia which the odes possess. This is one point where Keats is more modern than the rest of the Romantics;
his poetry is dense, complex and not ironic.

Ode writing is very subjective in nature and it deals with someone who is unappreciated either by beloved,
community or nature itself. Intensified and amplified emotions generally involve an emotional indulge into the
world which is beyond the realm of physical and concrete things. High emotions and spirituality are considered the
key themes in Keats and Shelley’s poetry.

The Greek and Roman myth was used and transformed by its believers. However, Keats’ “I stood tip-toe upon a
little hill” brings the idea of classicism into the immediate world around Keats, while “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
returns to the place of beauty and classicism by bringing the poem into a classical setting, describing a Grecian rural
setting rather than an English one. Mythological figures identify anonymously at times, taking on the names Love,
Beauty, or Death in the stead of Hades, Cupid, or other gods. There is reference to Ruth from the Bible and Jove
from Judaism. There are multiple biblical, classical, and anonymous allusions that take place, expanding nature as
transcendent of all the physical attributes these allusions pay homage to. The human spirit evolves through the
senses; the gods become important by reflecting the importance and significance of the physical world around them,
not the other way around.

Metamorphoses by Ovid talks about the “laurels” from the myth of Daphne and Apollo, the “Nightingale” from the
myth of Procne and Philomela, or the “starry” night from numerous myths.  In the Ode to the Nightingale by John
Keats, the Nightingale appears only in the title, but plays an important role as a lens to interpret poem’s actual
meaning.  In myth, the nightingale symbolizes immortality and freedom as an allusion to the myth of Philomela and
her sister who were turned into birds in order to escape their captor and rapist.

In simple words, the word “ode” has two separate definitions, one stricter and one looser. In the strict definition, an
ode is a classical poem that has a specific structure and is aimed at an object or person. In this sense, odes usually
express elevated emotion, and are often used to praise a leader or a work of art. In the loose definition, an ode is any
art work or literature that expresses high praise. This could include praising the groom, or an emotional eulogy at
someone’s funeral. They were designed to be read out loud in ancient Greece, where odes were first written, in
public settings, to honor the person or thing in question. Odes were often read at funerals or coronation ceremonies,
and were the primary way of honoring their leaders and heroes by the Greeks. The ode was used in later eras to
praise non - human things, particularly natural phenomena. For example, poets, in all their inaccessible majesty,
would write odes to the East Wind to guide their ships across the sea or odes to the mountains. This was particularly
common during the Romantic era when the highest virtues were considered to be nature, feelings, and childlike
wonder. The ode's function is quite similar in the modern world; it is a way of declaring publicly their respect and
admiration for a person or thing by a writer or artist.