Ode

The ode is a poem, if not a song, of praise. It’s usually not in a form such as a sestina or villanelle, but will often be blank verse with iambic pentameter and end rhymes. The Greek poet Pindar is credited with writing the first odes, according to Padgett in the Handbook of Poetic Forms. Although Pindar's were intricate, like so many things, the form has “lightened up” over the centuries until now when the most important point is praise. While the ode does remain a poem of praise, that praise can be delivered in many ways. Odes often have a lofty air about them such as the early English odes written by Ben Johnson including “To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison”. Although this mimics the early Pindar structure, it is also an update of the form.

It is written in praise of a life well lived, even if brief. Here is some commentary on this ode followed by the poem itself. Ben Jonson – “The Ode on Cary and Morison” – Reading The Norton Anthology of English Literature (wordpress.com).

To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison

               The Turn

Brave infant of Saguntum, clear

Thy coming forth in that great year,

When the prodigious Hannibal did crown

His rage with razing your immortal town.

Thou, looking then about,

Ere thou wert half got out,

Wise child, didst hastily return,

And mad’st thy mother’s womb thine urn.

How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind   

Of deepest lore, could we the center find!

                The Counterturn

 Did wiser Nature draw thee back

From out the horror of that sack,

Where shame, faith, honor, and regard of right

Lay trampled on; the deeds of death and night

Urged, hurried forth, and hurled

Upon th’ affrighted world;

Sword, fire, and famine, with fell fury met,

And all on utmost ruin set,

As, could they but life’s miseries foresee,

No doubt all infants would return like thee?

                The Stand

 For what is life, if measured by the space,

Not by the act?

Or maskèd man, if valued by his face

Above his fact?

Here’s one outlived his peers

And told forth fourscore years;

He vexèd time and busied the whole state,

Troubled both foes and friends;

But ever to no ends:

What did this stirrer but die late?

How well at twenty had he fall’n or stood!

For three of his fourscore he did no good.

                The Turn

 He entered well, by virtuous parts,

Got up and thrived with honest arts;

He purchased friends, and fame, and honors then,

And had his noble name advanced with men;

But weary of that flight

He stooped in all men’s sight

To sordid flatteries, acts of strife,

And sunk in that dead sea of life

So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup,

But that the cork of title buoyed him up.

                The Counterturn

Alas, but Morison fell young;

He never fell, thou fall’st, my tongue.

He stood, a soldier to the last right end,

A perfect patriot, and a noble friend,

But most a virtuous son.

All offices were done

By him so ample, full, and round,

In weight, in measure, number, sound,

As, though his age imperfect might appear,

His life was of humanity the sphere.

                The Stand

Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears,

And make them years;

Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage   

To swell thin age;

Repeat of things a throng,

To show thou hast been long,

Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell

By what was done and wrought

In season, and so brought

To light: her measures are, how well

Each syllabe answered, and was formed how fair;

These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.

                The Turn

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May;

Although it fall and die that night,

It was the plant and flower of light.

In small proportions we just beauties see,

And in short measures life may perfect be.

                The Counterturn

Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,

And let thy looks with gladness shine;

Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,

And think, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead.

He leaped the present age,

Possessed with holy rage

To see that bright eternal day;

Of which we priests and poets say

Such truths as we expect for happy men,

And there he lives with memory, and Ben

                The Stand

Jonson! who sung thus of him, ere he went

Himself to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant   

To have expressed   

In this bright asterism;

Where it were friendship’s schism

(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)

To separate these twi-

Lights, the Dioscuri,

And keep the one half from his Harry.

But fate doth so alternate the design,

Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.

                The Turn

And shine as you exalted are,

Two names of friendship, but one star:

Of hearts the union. And those not by chance

Made, or indenture, or leased out t’advance

The profits for a time.

No pleasures vain did chime

Of rimes, or riots, at your feasts,

Orgies of drink, or feigned protests,

But simple love of greatness and of good;

That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

                The Counterturn

This made you first to know the why

You liked, then after to apply

That liking, and approach so one the tother,

Till either grew a portion of the other:

Each styled by his end

The copy of his friend.

You lived to be the great surnames

And titles by which all made claims

Unto the virtue. Nothing perfect done,

But as a Cary, or a Morison.

                The Stand

 And such a force the fair example had,

As they that saw

The good, and durst not practice it, were glad

That such a law

Was left yet to mankind;

Where they might read and find

Friendship, indeed, was written, not in words;

And with the heart, not pen,

Of two so early men,

Whose lines her rolls were, and recòrds,

Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin,

Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

 

To write a contemporary ode, try to keep it lofty, if only as an exercise in “loftiness”. This is an ode by me praising a book by Edward Hirsch. The book is one of my very favorites.  

Ode to a Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch

O Glossary!

With your ABC systemic

listings of all things poetic,

            I say thank you.

 

O Glossary!

From the initial abecederian

to the zeugma contrarian

            I say halleluh.

 

O Glossary!

Throughout your seven hundred pages

all poetry for the ages

            I say yes, do.

 

O Glossary!

Continue to enlighten, to list

even the types of poems we resist

            or even say no to.

 

O Glossary!

When I look up renga

I see also tanka

            and end up at haiku.

 

O Glossary!

The names have no mystery

but lots and lots of history

            and I say thank you.

 

 

 

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