What Is an Ode? | Definition & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Jun 30
- 9 min read
Updated: Jul 5
An ode is a lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. There are many different types of odes, and they can be just about anything, limited only by the imagination of the poet. This type of poem can be traced back to Ancient Greece. In the Greek tradition, there are two types of odes:
The Pindaric Ode; and
The Horatian Ode
The Pindaric ode was named after the Greek poet Pindar, and it celebrates a public persona,victory, or event. Think about an ode to a victorious general or athlete. It is also rather formal and follows a structure that can be divided into three parts:
Strophe: The stanza that establishes the theme
Antistrophe: The stanza that acts as a counterbalance to the theme
Epode: The stanza that ends the ode
The Horatian ode, on the other hand, is more formal and intimate and doesn’t follow a formal structure. In this article, we explain what an ode is and give examples from Percy Shelley and John Keats.
The anatomy of an ode
We will now look at how a short ode by the Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, namely “To Night” functions in terms of structure and intent. "To Night” by Percy Shelley is a poem written in praise of the night. It can be described as a poem written in praise of sweet melancholy, which the night supposedly represents in the mind of the poet.
Percy Shelley, “To Night,” (written in 1821):
Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand—
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest.
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?—And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovèd Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon
The poet romanticizes and personifies the night as something beautiful and mysterious, using a literary device known as a pathetic fallacy, where human emotions are attributed to nature. We see this in particular in the second stanza, where the night is asked to “Wrap thy form in a mantle gray … Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day.”
The poem does not bear an exact match to the traditional structure of the Pindaric ode. However, it does bear some resemblance. In the traditional Pindaric ode, the strophe establishes the theme; the antistrophe acts as a counterbalance to the theme, and the epode ends the ode.
In the case of Shelley’s poem, the poem has a structure, which may have been influenced by the Horatian tradition of hymn to Gods, according to an analysis by Kurt Schlueter (1997). The poem, more than being an ode, is a prayer or hymn to the night. Percy treats the night like a God being petitioned or summoned.
The first two stanzas call upon the night to visit the poet. We see this in the first two lines of the first stanza: “Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, / Spirit of Night!” The next two stanzas represent a second movement and can be described as the antistrophe, presenting a counter balance.
Stanza 3 compares the night to day and describes his dissatisfaction with the day, saying it lingers “like an unloved guest.” Stanza 4 mentions both death and sleep as the brother and child of the night, respectively, appealing to the poet. The poet explains how he rejected them both as inadequate.
Finally, Stanza 5 or the epode concludes the poem by reaffirming the poet’s rejection of death and sleep and asking for the night to come with its boon. This poem has been criticized for being incomplete. It is one of the more popular poems of Shelley. However, critics typically point out that the poet makes it unclear why the night is being summoned and what boon the poet asks of the night.
However, the first two stanzas delineating the awesome power of the night to inspire dreams and imagination gives us a clue. The night, according to Shelley, “wovest dreams of joy and fear” and holds an “opiate wand,” referring to opium, a drug associated with reverie and dreams at the time. The poet can be described as invoking the power of the night to create artistically.
Aren’t all poems odes, anyway?
In Ancient Greece, an ode was properly defined and set apart from other types of poetry. It was actually performed on stage or theater and followed a rigid structure. It was obviously different from say an epic poem, play, or other types of Greek lyrical poetry.
What about the modern era? Can we think of most poems as odes? I ask this, considering the definition of an ode as a lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Doesn’t that cover everything? Take for instance Vivivian Virtue's poem dedicated to the Jamaican painter, Albert Huei, “Landscape painter, Jamaica” (1938):
I watch him set up easel,
Both straddling precariously
A corner of the twisted, climbing
Mountain track.
A tireless humming-bird, his brush
Dips, darts, hovers now here, now there,
Where puddles of pigment
Bloom in the palette’s wild small garden.
The poem doesn't have the word "ode" in its title, but it shows the painstaking skill that Huei spends on his art. Vivid imagery is used to describe his method as "A tireless humming-bird" dipping, darting, and hovering over his "palette's wild small garden." In the process, the poet is paying homage to the painter, as we should expect of an ode.
There are many other such poems. Kamau Brathwaite's "Making of the Drum" (published in 1968) better fulfills the spirit of the ode in European tradition, although he uses a wholly different structure from say the more famous odes of the Romantic poets:
The Skin
First the goat
must be killed
and the skin
stretched.
Bless you, four-footed animal, who eats rope,
skilled
upon the rocks, horned with our sin;
stretch your skin, stretch
it tight on our hope;
we have killed
you to make a thin
voice that will reach
further than hope
further than heaven . . .
The poet is simultaneously describing the making of a drum and paying homage to the goat, whose skin is used to make said drum. The religious overtones are obvious. Percy Shelley's "To Night" can be described as a personal incantation to the night and whatever values that Shelley personally links to the night.
In the case of Brathwaite, his poem serves a more public purpose, comparable to the spirit of the Pindaric ode. The making of a drum is a communal effort that is undertaken to secure the well-being of various African communities. The drum will eventually serve as "a thin voice that will reach further than hope . . . further than heaven." In short, it will serve as a means of communicating with communal spirits.
Let’s look at another odal poem. This time, Wordsworth’s “London, 1802” (written in 1802, obviously):
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
This is a sonnet, which, on the face of it, is supposed to be a distinct form of poetry separate from an ode. However, the spirit of the poem is,how can we say it, “odish” or at least ode-like. The poem was written in celebration of the British poet Milton. Wordsworth actually relies on the structure of the Miltonic sonnet, which is fitting.
The first line wishes for Milton to be alive. Then it goes on to record a litany of the failures and shortcomings of England, which is described as “a fen / of stagnant waters” (Lines 2–3). The poem is divided into two movements as we expect of a sonnet. The first eight lines wish that Milton was alive and describe why: the moral stagnation of England.
Milton is portrayed as an almost messianic figure that can save the country. Wordsworth appeals for him to:
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
A rather tall order for a man who had been dead for more than two centuries. The last six lines go into explaining the need for Milton by extolling the man’s virtues. Milton had a soul “like a Star” and a voice as free and majestic as the sea.
All this while being humble and attending to lowly duties. If an ode is a lyric poem that celebrates a person or thing, then for sure, the poem could be renamed “An Ode to Milton.” Therefore, we can say that an ode does not necessarily have to be named such.
Nevertheless, words and labels have meaning. Poets who consciously describe their poems as odes are deliberately paying homage to an ancient Greek tradition, which has been mediated to us via the modern European poetic tradition. So, we are going to look at an example of an earnestly written ode, intentionally following this tradition by Keats.
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Keats, the ode master
Some of the most famous odes written in the history of English literature were penned by John Keats. The poet wrote several Horatian odes in 1819. These odes would play a big part in securing his artistic legacy, especially considering the fact that he died only two years later at the age of twenty-five.
The “Great Odes of 1819" include:
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to Psyche
Ode to a Melancholy
Ode on Indolence
To Autumn
I briefly touched on his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” an ekphrastic poem describing the art depicted on a Grecan urn. You can take a look at it here: What is Ekphrasis? Here, we will look briefly at “Ode to a Nightingale” (published in 1819), specifically Stanzas 3 and 7:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
The poet has personified the nightingale singing into a symbol representing eternal art. In Stanza 3, the bird is described as never having known “The weariness, the fever, and the fret,” in short, the suffering common to men. It is worst than common suffering. Human nature is portrayed as tragic, “Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.” We can contrast this to the bird in Stanza 7:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
The bird depicted in Stanza 7 “wast not born for death.” Its song is immortal and has been heard across time and space by “emperor and clown.” It was heard by Ruth in ancient Biblical times and by Gods and Goddesses in the dawn of time when “charm’d magic casements” opened on the foam — a reference to the birth of Aphrodite.
Keats is taking part in a long tradition of treating the nightingale as a symbol of poetry. I covered this in Milton’s Sonnet 1. Just as in “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” we see Keats taking refuge in art as an ideal superior to real life. Art or song is seen as something that brings joy, serves the spirit, and last forever, whereas human life is nothing but disappointment and suffering.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, July 01). What Is an Ode? | Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/__ode |
