Ode on Melancholy

“Ode on Melancholy” is a 30-line poem made up of three ten-line stanzas. It is written in iambic pentameter and uses a traditional structure, employing a strophe (Stanza 1), antistrophe (Stanza 2), and epode (Stanza 3). A strophe generally sets up the form and meter as well as presents a specific idea. In this case, the question of the purpose of melancholy is set in epic terms of Greco-Roman mythology. The antistrophe contradicts the idea presented in the strophe. Here, the poem suggests a practical alternative to epic despair—embracing momentary beauty. The antistrophe also changes the poem’s setting to the contemporary world. The epode summarizes and concludes the poem. Keats’s speaker blends the epic quality of the strophe, using personification to create a new mythos of emotion, with the more contemporary idea that all physical beauty and human emotion passes.

The poem’s rhyme scheme employs Keats’s variation on the sonnet stanza. Each stanza uses an English/Shakespearean quatrain followed by an Italian/Petrarchan sestet. The rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE in the first two stanzas, only changing in the last stanza to ABABCDEDCE.