“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 <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/meter/">meter</a> as well as presents a specific idea. In this case, the question of the purpose of melancholy is set in <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/epic/">epic</a> 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 <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/setting/">setting</a> to the contemporary world. The epode summarizes and concludes the poem. Keats’s speaker blends the epic quality of the strophe, using <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/personification-in-literature-definition-examples/">personification</a> to create a new mythos of emotion, with the more contemporary idea that all physical beauty and human emotion passes. The poem’s <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/rhyme/">rhyme</a> scheme employs Keats’s variation on the <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/sonnet/">sonnet</a> stanza. Each stanza uses an English/Shakespearean <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/quatrain-in-literature-definition-examples/">quatrain</a> followed by an Italian/Petrarchan sestet. The <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/rhyme-scheme/">rhyme scheme</a> is ABABCDECDE in the first two stanzas, only changing in the last stanza to ABABCDEDCE.

Form and Meter

Personification

Gustatory Imagery

Values & Ideas

Beauty

Literary Area of Study

British Literature

Emotions & Behavior

Grief

Life & Time

Mortality & Death

Literary Movement

Romanticism / Romantic Period

Poetry

Romantic Poetry

Short Poems

John Keats

Adult

Poem

Fiction

Guide

Study Guide

title

content

Overview

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Ode on Melancholy

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