Overlapping Odes

When reading the Odes by Keats for class on Tuesday I was stuck by how much overlapping diction imagery and ideas there were across the odes. Perhaps the strongest and most central thing shared across the odes is reference to Greek and Roman Mythology. This is hardly surprising, given the roots of the Ode trace back to the ancient Greeks as John discussed on Tuesday, but what I found noteworthy was how the same aspects appeared in the odes to differing effects. In “Ode to Psyche” the speaker says “No altar heap’d with flowers…No voice, no lute, no pipe” (29-32) and “Yes, I will be thy priest” (50). The first of these lines contrasts sharply with “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which deals a great deal with the imagined sounds of “pipes and timbrels” (10). At first I was confused by this, thinking Keats was putting sound and music to totally different purposes. Then I remembered that “Ode on a Grecian Urn” also says that “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter” and speaks of “spirit ditties of no tone” (11-14). In a similar fashion as to how the music Keats imagines as he stares upon the urn is sweeter to him than actual music; he argues in “Ode to Psyche” that his poem, his dedication is a sweeter song for its silent nature, preserved on the page. The ideas of altars and priests from the previous lines also support this idea, as Keats assumes the role of priest in “Ode to Psyche.” While in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the speaker only guesses at “to what green altar, O mysterious priest” (32), in “Ode to Psyche” Keats becomes the priest, and his poem the altar on which he makes a sacrifice of his efforts to Psyche. The context of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” helped me make sense of “Ode to Psyche” and the interplay between the odes in general.