Ode to Psyche

Each stanza has a different rhyme scheme. The first stanza has alternate rhyming lines in the first two quatrains (Lines 1-8), followed by seven irregularly rhymed lines in which two lines have no rhyme: “roof” (Line 10) and “grass” (Line 15). These lines are followed by two rhyming couplets (Lines 16-17 and 18-19) and then a return in the final quatrain to alternating rhymes. This scheme can thus be written ABAB CDCD EFGEEGH IIJJ KIKI.

Keats actually intended the end of Line 10 to rhyme with the following line, “ran.” He wrote “whisp’ring fan,” but the publishers changed it to “roof.” Keats had become too ill to supervise the process—thus upsetting his intended rhyme scheme of EFFE for this quatrain. A reproduction of Keats’s handwritten draft shows his intentions.

Stanza 2 is simpler, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF. Stanza 3 is more complex. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB CDDCEF GHGH. This includes two lines (E and F in the scheme) that have no precise rhyme—“moan” (Line 44) and “hours” (Line 45). The final stanza has alternating rhymes with the exception of one couplet (Lines 58-59) and can be represented thus: ABAB CDCD EE FGFG HIHI.

An ode is a long lyric poem in an elevated style on a serious topic. It is based on classical models. The regular or Pindaric ode is modeled after the Greek poet Pindar. It consists of two stanzas (the strophe and antistrophe) that follow the same structure, followed by one stanza that has a different form (the epode). In English literature, Thomas Gray’s “The Bard” (1757) is a Pindaric ode. The Horatian ode (named after the Roman poet Horace) has a sequence of regular strophes or stanzas.

Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and “To Autumn” are Horatian odes. There are also irregular odes, introduced into English literature by Abraham Cowley in 1656, in which each stanza has its own line length, rhyme scheme, and number of lines. It is the most common form of the English ode and was popular during the Romantic era, when poets used it as a vehicle for personal meditations and reflections. Examples include Keats’s “Ode to Psyche,” William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807), Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode” (1802), and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind” (1820).

An allusion is a reference in a literary work to a historical person, place, or event or to another work of literature or mythology. The purpose of an allusion is to provide a wider frame of reference that will enlarge the reader’s understanding of the work. Keats alludes throughout the poem to the classical story of Cupid and Psyche and to other aspects of Greek mythology, including Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, and forms of worship practiced by the ancient Greeks, as well as zephyrs (breezes, derived from Zephyr, god of the west wind) and Dryads (spirits that live in forests). Keats expects his reader to be familiar with these allusions and to bring that knowledge to an understanding of the poem. He does not explain them directly. Regarding Psyche, he alludes only to her love for Cupid, saying nothing about the wider story of the goddess—how she was born a beautiful mortal woman, incurred the displeasure of the goddess Venus, and went through many trials and hardships before finally becoming deified.