Summary
Keats’s speaker opens the poem with an address to the
goddess Psyche, urging her to hear his words, and asking that she
forgive him for singing to her her own secrets. He says that while
wandering through the forest that very day, he stumbled upon “two
fair creatures” lying side by side in the grass, beneath a “whisp’ring roof”
of leaves, surrounded by flowers. They embraced one another with
both their arms and wings, and though their lips did not touch,
they were close to one another and ready “past kisses to outnumber.”
The speaker says he knew the winged boy, but asks who the girl was.
He answers his own question: She was Psyche.
In the second stanza, the speaker addresses 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 divinities, Psyche has none of the trappings
of worship: She has no temples, no altars, no choir to sing for
her, and so on. In the third stanza, the speaker attributes this
lack to Psyche’s youth; she has come into the world too late for
“antique vows” and the “fond believing lyre.” But the speaker says
that even in the fallen days of his own time, he would like to pay
homage to Psyche and become her choir, her music, and her oracle.
In the fourth stanza, he continues with these declarations, saying
he will become Psyche’s priest and build her a temple in an “untrodden
region” of his own mind, a region surrounded by thought that resemble
the beauty of nature and tended by “the gardener Fancy,” or imagination.
He promises Psyche “all soft delight” and says that the window of
her new abode will be left open at night, so that her winged boy—”the
warm Love”—can come in.
Form
The four stanzas of “Ode to Psyche” are written in the
loosest form of any of Keats’s odes. The stanzas vary in number
of lines, rhyme scheme, and metrical scheme, and convey the effect
of spontaneous rhapsody rather than considered form. Lines are iambic,
but vary from dimeter to pentameter; the most common rhymes are in
alternating lines (ABAB), but there are abundant exceptions, and
there are even unrhymed lines. (“Hours,” at the end of line ten
in the third stanza, is an example.) The number of lines in a stanza
is simply organic and irregular; stanza one has 23 lines,
stanza two has 12,
stanza three has 14,
and stanza four has 18.
In the first stanza, every line is written in iambic pentameter
except lines 12, 21,
and 23 (the first
two are trimeter, the last dimeter). The full rhyme scheme is ABAB
CDCD EFGEEGH IIJJ KIKI. It can essentially be broken into five parts:
two pairs of four-line, alternating rhymes (ABAB CDCD), a looser
seven-line sequence that includes rhythmic irregularity and two
unrhymed words (EFGEEGH, with the trimeter in line 12 and
the unrhymed words “roof” at the end of line 10 and
“grass” at the end of line 15),
two couplets (IIJJ), and a final four-line section with alternating
rhymes (KIKI), differing from the first in that the “I” rhyme-lines
(which match the rhymes of the first couplet above) are shorter
than the “K” lines, with the trimeter of line 21 and
the dimeter of line 23.
(This sounds far more complicated than it is; penciling in the letters at
the end of each line will make the scheme much easier to follow.)
The second stanza is shorter and much simpler. It follows
a strictly alternating rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF, and the only
irregularities are metrical, with two trimeters, lines 6and 8.
The result is that the CDCD section of this stanza differs slightly
from the others; the D-lines are shorter. The third stanza has trimeters
in lines 10, 12,
and 14; other than
that, the stanza is written in iambic pentameter. Its rhyme scheme
is ABAB CDDCEF GHGH. This is relatively self-explanatory, except
that “moan” and “hours,” the E- and F-lines (lines 9and 10)
do not have precise matches; “moan” rhymes roughly with “fans” and
“Olympians,” and “hours” rhymes roughly with “vows” and “boughs,”
but neither of these matches is as precise as the other rhymes in
the stanza. If those rhymes “count,” the rhyme scheme of the stanza
should be written as ABAB CDDCDA EFEF.
The final stanza has trimeters in lines 16 and 18,
and follows a relatively simple and natural rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD
EE FGFG HIHI. In other words, each section is four lines long and
alternates rhyming lines, except for the EE couplet in lines 9and 10.
