Ode on Melancholy

John Keats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1819

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Ode on Melancholy” is a 30-line poem made up of three ten-line stanzas. It is written in iambic pentameter and uses a traditional structure, employing a strophe (Stanza 1), antistrophe (Stanza 2), and epode (Stanza 3). A strophe generally sets up the form and meter as well as presents a specific idea. In this case, the question of the purpose of melancholy is set in epic terms of Greco-Roman mythology. The antistrophe contradicts the idea presented in the strophe. Here, the poem suggests a practical alternative to epic despair—embracing momentary beauty. The antistrophe also changes the poem’s setting to the contemporary world. The epode summarizes and concludes the poem. Keats’s speaker blends the epic quality of the strophe, using personification to create a new mythos of emotion, with the more contemporary idea that all physical beauty and human emotion passes.

The poem’s rhyme scheme employs Keats’s variation on the sonnet stanza. Each stanza uses an English/Shakespearean quatrain followed by an Italian/Petrarchan sestet. The rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE in the first two stanzas, only changing in the last stanza to ABABCDEDCE. There are few slant rhymes—“owl” (Line 7) with “soul” (Line 10); “peonies” (Line 17) and “eyes” (Line 20)—and most rhymes are exact. These variations with form show both Keats’s adherence to and deviation from tradition.

Personification

Lest the connection between the epic and mythological elements in the first stanza and the practical and natural elements of the second be lost, Keats turns to personification in his final stanza. Here, the emotions that humans are loathe to accept as fleeting, and the ones they struggle to embrace, are given capitalized names and human actions. The third stanza is populated by the characters Beauty (Line 21), Joy (Line 22), Pleasure (Line 23), Delight (Line 25), and Melancholy (Line 26). This serves two purposes. It makes these abstractions easier to conceive and it helps the holistic nature of the message. Humanizing Joy as a male figure “whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu” (Lines 22-23) shows the fleeting quality of happiness in a recognizable behavior. It also points us to the fact that humans tend to elevate their emotions to epic status, much as the Greeks and Romans used to do for gods and goddesses that stood for ideas, moods, and other earthly concepts. This ties stanza three to the prior stanzas and their concerns, showing that the everyday of stanza two feels as epic as the mythic underworld.

Gustatory Imagery

Keats is often described as sensuous poet, meaning that he relied on sensory description to enliven his poems. Keats doesn’t just rely on the visual. In this ode, Keats also works with taste, or what is known as gustatory imagery. This is mainly done through a stress on images of intoxicating, and/or toxic, food or drink. The speaker urges the addressee to avoid “wolf’s-bane [and] its poisonous wine” (Line 2) and “nightshade, ruby grape of Prosperine” (Line 4), both which could “drown the wakeful anguish of the soul” (Line 10). This stress on toxicity is revisited in the last stanza when “Pleasure [turns] to poison while the bee-mouth sips” (Line 24) and to “burst Joy’s grape” (Line 28) is to “taste[s] the sadness of [Melancholy’s] might” (Line 30). All of these images help the speaker get across the point that one must careful with one what ingests both physically and mentally. This can mean avoiding actual poisonous plants, escaping intoxicating draughts, or symbolically rejecting toxic behaviors, especially when an inevitable “melancholy fit shall fall” (Line 11).