"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
of 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 deeply
explores the world of feelings and the enjoyment of them as well as 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 imaginary, 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. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in
its strict form, were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium by Edmund Spenser. In Spenser’s
verse there are 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 Catallus, in Greek and Latin, in the intervening years. Each
poet naturally brought her or his 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 amor, 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;
  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 the
most famous example is 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 in Keats’ ‘’Ode on a Grecian Urn’’, P.B. Shelley’s ‘’Ode to the West
Wind’’ and ‘’Dejection : An Ode’’ by Samuel Taylor Colleridge.

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