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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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