A long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in
style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure.
As Norman Maclean has said, the
term now calls to mind a lyric which is "massive, public in its proclamations,
and Pindaric in its classical prototype"
("From Action to Image," in Critics and
Criticism, ed. R. S. Crane, 1952). The prototype was established by the Greek
poet Pindar, whose odes were modeled on the songs by the chorus in Greek
drama.
His complex stanzas were patterned in sets of three: moving in a
dance rhythm to the left, the chorus chanted the strophe; moving to the
right, the antistrophe; then, standing still, the epode.
The regular or Pindaric ode in English is a close imitation of Pindar's form, with all the strophes and antistrophes written in one stanza pattern,and all the epodes in another.
This form was introduced into England by Ben Jonson's ode "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison" (1629).
The typical construction can be conveniently studied in this poem or in Thomas Gray's "The Progress of Poesy"
(1757).
The irregular ode was introduced in 1656 by Abraham Cowley, who
imitated the Pindaric style and matter but disregarded the recurrent stanzaic
pattern in each strophic triad, instead, he allowed each stanza to establish its
own pattern of variable line lengths, number of lines, and rhyme scheme.
This type of irregular stanzaic structure, which is free to alter in accordance
with shifts in subject and mood, has been the most common for the English
ode ever since; Wordsworth's "Ode: Immortality" (1807) is representative.
Pindar's odes were encomiastic; that is, they were written to praise and
glorify someone—in the instance of Pindar, the ode celebrated a victorious
athlete in the Olympic games.
The earlier English odes, and many later ones,were also written to eulogize something, such as a person (John Dryden's"Anne Killigrew"), or the arts of music or poetry (Dryden's "Alexander's
Feast"), or a time of day (Collins' "Ode to Evening"), or abstract concepts
(Gray's "Hymn to Adversity" and Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty").
Romantic poets perfected the personal ode of description and passionate meditation,which is stimulated by (and sometimes at its close reverts to) an aspect of the outer scene and turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional problem or a generally human one (Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode, Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode," Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind").
Recent examples of this latter type are Allen Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead" and Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West."
The Horatian ode was originally modeled on the matter, tone, and form
of the odes of the Roman Horace.
In contrast to the passion, visionary boldness, and formal language of Pindar's odes, many Horatian odes are calm, meditative, and colloquial.
They are also usually homostrophic (that is, written in a single repeated stanza form), and shorter than the Pindaric ode.
Examples are Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from
Ireland" (1650) and Keats' ode "To Autumn" (1820).
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