III.

Modern Odes

The modern form of the ode dates from the Renaissance (14th to 17th centuries); like the Latin ode it is pure poetry, not intended for musical accompaniment. The French poet Pierre de Ronsard wrote odes in both the Pindaric and the Horatian styles. The earliest English odes include the “Epithalamion” and the “Prothalamion,” or marriage hymns, by the 16th-century poet Edmund Spenser. English writers of odes in the 17th century included Ben Jonson and Andrew Marvell, who wrote in the Horatian mode, and John Milton, whose ode “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity” follows Pindaric form. Milton's contemporary, Abraham Cowley, failed to understand the strophe-antistrophe-epode divisions of the classical Pindaric and Horatian ode, but he impressed his own conception of the ode as a lofty and tempestuous composition on later English and American literature. As a result, the ode in English is usually a succession of stanzas in lines of varying length and meter. A rebirth of the ode occurred during the 18th century. The English writers John Dryden and Alexander Pope both wrote odes commemorating Saint Cecilia, patron of sacred music, Dryden's work being intended for a musical setting. The Englishman William Collins, one of the greatest lyric poets of the age, wrote exquisite nature odes, such as “To Evening.” During the romantic period in England, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote “Ode to the West Wind” and John Keats produced his great odes, including “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

The popularity of the ode form waned during Victorian times (1837-1901), but interest in it was revived in the 20th century with works such as “Ode to the Confederate Dead” by the American writer Allen Tate and a variety of ode lyrics by the English poet W. H. Auden.