Ode to Psyche by John Keats

ODE TO PSYCHE

                   -John Keats

                   The speaker starts the poem with an address to the goddess Psyche, requesting her to hear his words, and asking that she must forgive him because he is about to sing her secrets. He says that while moving in the forest one day, he saw two fair creatures lying side by side in the grass, beneath a roof made of leaves, surrounded by flowers. They embrace one another with both their arms and wings, and though their lips did not touch, but they were close to one another. The speaker says he knew the winged boy, but asks who the girl was. He answers his own question and tells that She was Psyche.
                   Next, he calls Psyche again, describing her as the youngest and most beautiful of all the Olympian gods and goddesses. He believes this, he says, despite the fact that, unlike other god and goddesses, Psyche has not even a single place of worship. She has no temples, no altars, and no singers to sing for her, and so on. Next, he says that all this has happened because she has arrived late. She has come into the world very late. But he says that even in this time, he would like to pay homage to Psyche and will become her singer, her music, and her oracle. He continues with these declarations, saying he will become Psyche’s priest and build her a temple on a place where no one has ever walked in his own mind, a region surrounded by thought that resemble the beauty of nature or imagination. He promises Psyche by saying that the window of her new home will be left open at night, so that her winged boy and her Lover can come in at every night to meet her.

                   “Ode to Psyche,” made up of sixty-seven lines, is divided into four stanzas of varying lengths. Although iambic pentameter is the dominant meter of the poem, John Keats often includes lines of iambic trimester as well. The rhyme scheme is generally in a quatrain form of abab, but rhyming couplets are also employed. This technical complexity is typical of the ode form.

                   The poem begins with a direct address to the goddess Psyche, the personification of the human soul and this one-sided conversation continues throughout the poem. Keats himself is the first-person speaker, and “thou” is always the silent Psyche.

                   The first stanza, the longest in the poem, describes a vision or a dream Keats has of Psyche and her lover Eros lying “In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof/ Of leaves and trembled blossoms,” beside a brook and “cool-rooted flowers”: The soul—Psyche—and the body—Eros—lie together in the heart of nature. Keats imagines them not in a passionate embrace, but in a static, restful pose, as if he has come upon them after their lovemaking has ended. In another poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” he witnesses an eternal moment before any physical activity takes place between lovers and examines the difficulty in this position: Although “the maiden” will always remain beautiful and the man’s love will last forever, the couple, frozen in the marble of the urn, will never share a kiss.