Ode to Melancholy 'Line by Line'

Ode to Melancholy

Stanza I

The first stanza tells what not to do: The sufferer should not “go to Lethe,” or forget their sadness (Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology); should not commit suicide (nightshade, “the ruby grape of Prosperpine,” is a poison; Prosperpine is the mythological queen of the underworld); and should not become obsessed with objects of death and misery (the beetle, the death-moth, and the owl). For, the speaker says, that will make the anguish of the soul drowsy, and the sufferer should do everything he can to remain aware of and alert to the depths of his suffering.

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist 
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; 

·          Lethe: river in the underworld Hades in which souls about to be reborn bathed to forget the past; hence, river of forgetfulness.

·         wolf's-bane: poison. This name is the direct translation from the Greek for this plant. Also by choosing to use this name for the plant instead of one of its other names Keats sends the message that the plant is poisonous without requiring the reader to research the properties of the plant.

·         Lethe = River of Forgetfulness (Greek mythology)
Wolf's bane = a poisonous plant (Aconitum lycoctonum)
Nightshade = another poisonous plant (Belladonna atropina)
Proserpine = Queen of the Underworld
Yew berries = another poison.

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed 
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

·          nightshade: poison.

·         Proserpine: the queen of the underworld. Prosperpine was kidnapped by Pluto and taken to Hades, his kingdom. Her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility and grain, grieved for her loss and the earth became sterile. Proserpine was returned to her mother for six months each year when Demester's joy is reflected in fertility and crops. Proserpine's story, with its connection to the change of the seasons, is appropriate for this poem.

Make not your rosary of yew-berries, 
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be 
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; 

The moth and the butterfly are images of Psyche, the soul. The use of “death-moth” ties into “mournful Psyche.” It also represents life and death since the living moth becomes identified as death. The owl is also a symbol “of darkness and death” (Cooper 124). However, as a bird it represents the soul (Cooper 20). “Shade” is also a soul image and a death image; the word often refers to specters, souls that wander due to unfinished business. Keats pairs these images of soul and death, but he says not to allow them to represent the soul, “For shade to shade will come too drowsily” (l. 10). There is no need to hurry death because of depression. Death will come in its own time. 

·          yew-berries: symbol of mourning. The yew is traditionally associated with mourning.

·          rosary: prayer beads.

·          Line 6, beetle: The Egyptians regarded the beetle as sacred; as a symbol of resurrection, a jewel-beetle or scarab was placed in tombs.

·          death-moth: the death's head moth, so called because its markings resemble a human skull.

·         Line 7, Psyche: in Greek, the soul or mind as well as butterfly (used as its emblem).

·         Line 8, mysteries: secret rites.
For shade to shade will come too drowsily, 
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

·          Just like death and the seasons “the melancholy fit shall fall” (l. 11) and is part of a natural cycle (Baker). The fit builds up, unnoticed then comes “Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,” (l. 12). This is another image full of contradictions.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall 
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

·          Just like death and the seasons “the melancholy fit shall fall” (l. 11) and is part of a natural cycle (Baker). The fit builds up, unnoticed then comes “Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,” (l. 12). This is another image full of contradictions.

·          The possible intensity, unpredictability, and inescapableness of melancholy is suggested by "fit." Think of your associations with this word.

That fosters (develops)  the droop-headed flowers all, 
And hides the green hill in an April shroud; 

·          The rain cloud “fosters” these flowers by helping them grow. However, while it is raining the flowers hang their heads down as if depressed or mourning. Even though the cloud may hide the growth, this melancholy that causes people to be “droop-headed” is actually helping them grow. These lines also bring the idea of vision into the poem. The cloud obscures vision. One literally cannot see the green hill through the cloud. However, this shows how when the cloud of melancholy hits one, they will be unable to see the beauty behind the cloud. Instead they see the “April shroud.” This phrase draws the reader back to the first stanza with its image of life and death. April is the beginning of spring. It is a month of regeneration and fertility celebrations. Keats identifies it with a shroud. Keats then says, when one can only see the “April shroud” they should
“glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

·          Lines 1-4 describe the physical circumstances literally and the emotional circumstances figuratively. The clouds are "weeping," an appropriate action for melancholy. But is it surprising, even startling perhaps, to find that these weeping clouds (a negative image) "foster" (or nurture) the flower? Doesn't the reference to flowers call up positive images? However, the flowers are"droop-headed," a phrase having a double application. (1) On a literal level, the rain has caused them to droop. (2) On a figurative level, "droop-headed" connotes sadness, grief. The flowers are more specifically described in lines 5 and 7. The rain temporarily hides the view or hill (remember all these nature images are descriptions of melancholy); however the hill is green, connoting fertility, lushness, beauty, aliveness, and it retains these qualities whether we can see them at a particular moment or not. The rain which cuts visibility is called a "shroud," an obvious death reference, but the month is April, a time when nature renews itself, comes alive after winter's barrenness and harshness. Is there a suggestion that melancholy is or may be fruitful?

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, 
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, 
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

·          When one can only see their melancholy then they should surfeit on it to get to the beauty beyond. They should give into the depression until they get sick of it. This will enable them to grow past it and to see the fertile “green hill.” However, if Melancholy becomes angry that one is no longer solely occupied by her, then take her in and let her loose within. Keats is saying once again to feed on melancholy. He is suggesting a cyclical pattern of melancholy and joy. He is also suggesting a sort of beauty within Melancholy. The “green hill” is behind the shroud; this signifies that once past the melancholy fit it is beautiful. The “peerless eyes” may also refer to the beauty of melancholy that Keats seems to be getting at. It could also refer back to the idea of vision and the idea that one cannot peer through melancholy. 

Each image Keats chooses to go with “glut they sorrow” contains both symbols of life and death. A rose is a beautiful and complex image. According to Cooper it can symbolize both life and death; “As the flower of the feminine deities it is love, life, creation, fertility, beauty and also virginity. The evanescence of the rose represents death, mortality and sorrow; its thorns signify pain” (Cooper 141). To further this idea he pairs the rose with the word morning, which has a double meaning due to the similarity to mourning. Morning is associated with dawn and rebirth, but the sound similarity to mourning associates it with death. The rainbow is a symbol of “Transfiguration; […] the bridge or boundary between this world and Paradise” (Cooper 136). The rainbow is a bridge between life and death. According to Hermione de Almeida, the “globed peonies” are another poisonous plant. But the peony is a healing symbol (Cooper 128). 

With this idea of finding life and death within the same image Keats turns to the idea of finding Melancholy with Beauty, Joy, and Pleasure. 

·          The rest of the stanza advises what to do in these circumstances: enjoy as fully as possible the beauties of this world and thereby welcome melancholy. To "glut" sorrow is to gorge or to experience to the fullest. The rose is beautiful, but as a "morning" rose it lasts a short time, i.e., the experience is transitory. Similarly the rainbow produced by the wave is beautiful and shortlived (think about how long a wave lasts) Is it relevant that waves keep coming? The beauty of the peonies ("globed" describes their round shape) is "wealth"; is "wealth" a positive or a negative value here?

·           The last four lines turn from nature to people. The imagery of wealth (her anger is "rich") and eating intently ("feed deep") tie the natural and the human worlds and the two divisions of the stanza together. The words "glut," "feed deep," and "Emprison" imply passionate involvement in experience; also the eating imagery suggests that melancholy is incorporated into, becomes part of and nourishes the individual. The food imagery is continued in stanza III. The lover, while the object of her angry raving, also enjoys her beauty ("peerless eyes").

·          In the second stanza, the speaker tells the sufferer what to do in place of the things he forbade in the first stanza. When afflicted with “the melancholy fit,” the sufferer should instead overwhelm his sorrow with natural beauty, glutting it on the morning rose, “on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,” or in the eyes of his beloved.

She dwells with Beauty -- Beauty that must die; 
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, 
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips; 
Ay, in the very temple of delight 
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

·           It is important to recognize that "She" refers both to the beloved of stanza II and to melancholy. Lines 1-3 explain the basis for the advice of stanza II; beauty dies, joy is brief (while we are experiencing joy, it is saying goodbye to us), and pleasure is painful ("aching pleasure" is a characteristic Keatsian oxymoron). Line 4 offers a specific example of the abstractions of lines 1-3; as the bee sips nectar (a pleasurable activity), the nectar turns to poison. Having shown the inextricably mixed nature of life, Keats moves on to talk about melancholy explicitly.

·          Where can melancholy be found? As has been implied, it is found in pleasure, in delight. Melancholy is "Veil'd" because it is hidden from us during pleasure, which is generally what we are aware of and are absorbed in. However there are those who see melancholy-in-delight. They live intensely, vigorously; the language reflects their exuberance and power, "strenuous" and "burst." Their sensitivity to life is of the highest quality, "palate fine."

·          In the end of this poem, we see the reward of the "wakeful anguish of the soul" of stanza I. The possessor of the wakeful soul shall taste melancholy's sadness (note the synaesthesia of tasting a feeling). The change of tense, from present pleasure to future melancholy, expresses their relationship--one is part of and inevitably follows the other. Keats concludes that the wakeful soul will be the "trophy" or prize gained or won from melancholy. Trophy is described as "cloudy," which has negative overtones. Does this negative touch suggest any ambivalence on the poet's part? or is it the an absolute statement of the inextricably mixed nature of pleasure and melancholy?

·          Another way of asking this question: is Keats's affirming, without any qualifications, doubt, or hesitation, the inseparable nature of opposites in life?

·          In the third stanza, the speaker explains these injunctions, saying that pleasure and pain are inextricably linked: Beauty must die, joy is fleeting, and the flower of pleasure is forever “turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.” The speaker says that the shrine of melancholy is inside the “temple of Delight,” but that it is only visible if one can overwhelm oneself with joy until it reveals its center of sadness, by “burst[ing] Joy’s grape against his palate fine.” The man who can do this shall “taste the sadness” of melancholy’s might and “be among her cloudy trophies hung.”

Form

“Ode on Melancholy,” the shortest of Keats’s odes, is written in a very regular form that matches its logical, argumentative thematic structure. Each stanza is ten lines long and metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter. The first two stanzas, offering advice to the sufferer, follow the same rhyme scheme, ABABCDECDE; the third, which explains the advice, varies the ending slightly, following a scheme of ABABCDEDCE, so that the rhymes of the eighth and ninth lines are reversed in order from the previous two stanzas. As in some other odes (especially “Autumn” and “Grecian Urn”), the two-part rhyme scheme of each stanza (one group of AB rhymes, one of CDE rhymes) creates the sense of a two-part thematic structure as well, in which the first four lines of each stanza define the stanza’s subject, and the latter six develop it. (This is true especially of the second two stanzas.)

Themes

If the “Ode to Psyche” is different from the other odes primarily because of its form, the “Ode on Melancholy” is different primarily because of its style. The only ode not to be written in the first person, “Melancholy” finds the speaker admonishing or advising sufferers of melancholy in the imperative mode; presumably his advice is the result of his own hard-won experience. In many ways, “Melancholy” seeks to synthesize the language of all the previous odes—the Greek mythology of “Indolence” and “Urn,” the beautiful descriptions of nature in “Psyche” and “Nightingale,” the passion of “Nightingale,” and the philosophy of “Urn,” all find expression in its three stanzas—but “Melancholy” is more than simply an amalgam of the previous poems. In it, the speaker at last explores the nature of transience and the connection of pleasure and pain in a way that lets him move beyond the insufficient aesthetic understanding of “Urn” and achieve the deeper understanding of “To Autumn.”

For the first time in the odes, the speaker in “Melancholy” urges action rather than passive contemplation. Rejecting both the eagerly embraced drowsiness of “Indolence” and the rapturous “drowsy numbness” of “Nightingale,” the speaker declares that he must remain alert and open to “wakeful anguish,” and rather than flee from sadness, he will instead glut it on the pleasures of beauty. Instead of numbing himself to the knowledge that his mistress will grow old and die (that “Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,” as he said in “Nightingale”), he uses that knowledge to feel her beauty even more acutely. Because she dwells with “beauty that must die,” he will “feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.”

In the third stanza, the speaker offers his most convincing synthesis of melancholy and joy, in a way that takes in the tragic mortality of life but lets him remain connected to his own experience. It is precisely the fact that joy will come to an end that makes the experience of joy such a ravishing one; the fact that beauty dies makes the experience of beauty sharper and more thrilling. The key, he writes, is to see the kernel of sadness that lies at the heart of all pleasure—to “burst joy’s grape” and gain admission to the inner temple of melancholy. Though the “Ode on Melancholy” is not explicitly about art, it is clear that this synthetic understanding of joy and suffering is what has been missing from the speaker’s earlier attempts to experience art.

“Ode on Melancholy” originally began with a stanza Keats later crossed out, which described a questing hero in a grotesque mythological ship sailing into the underworld in search of the goddess Melancholy. Though Keats removed this stanza from his poem (the resulting work is subtler and less overwrought), the story’s questing hero still provides perhaps the best framework in which to read this poem. The speaker has fully rejected his earlier indolence and set out to engage actively with the ideas and themes that preoccupy him, but his action in this poem is still fantastical, imaginative, and strenuous. He can only find what he seeks in mythical regions and imaginary temples in the sky; he has not yet learned how to find it in his own immediate surroundings. That understanding and the final presentation of the odes’ deepest themes will occur in “To Autumn.”