Thoughts on “Ode to Psyche” by John Keats
What first strikes me about this ode is its passionate sincerity in the reverence to ancient Greek religion. Before writing about Ancient Greece, or reading one of that civilization’s surviving works, I think it would be invaluable to read those lines regarding holy elements and happy pieces. In those thoughts does the spirit of Ancient Greece still breathe.
Now: at the start, the first couple lines effectively set the tone: the gentle voice in humbling worship. The first four lines almost require a bowed head.
There is that particular smoothness of light and graceful music in the second line,
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear
The majority of short “e” sounds, and the long vowels, varied but related to the “e” sound, in “sweet” and “dear” contribute to this.
As in his Nightingale poem, Keats questions whether what he experienced was a dream or reality, although it is not the theme of this poem. The theme is a poet’s desire to worship a neglected deity.
With a head empty of thoughts, he discovers, stepping through the forest, the tryst between Psyche and Cupid.
The line,
…beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms…
Is one of those lovely lines of poetry that ornament a natural fact. Next time a branch shades you from the summer sun, give an ear to the sound it makes on the wind. Whispering is a wonderfully appropriate verb and works on another level. It is a facet of private love, and almost makes the reader think the speaker is actually listening in on their secret conversation.
In the first two lines of the second stanza, please pass these colored flowers across your mind. The selection of colors, such as blue and silver-white, are decoratively pleasing. Perhaps these hues could hint at body tones, as he had described the feet of Cynthia in Endymion as “blue-veined”.
Keats, steeped in Shakespeare, has adopted his methods of inventiveness. New phrases will be made to serve as new crafted words for undescribed facts. But the sign of affectation, or the sign of simply copying, comes from calm-breathing for me. It does not add enough to warrant a new phrase. However he does strike it right a few lines later with “soft-handed slumber,” a very correct phrase.
In the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” there is the famous lines of a figure not able to lock lips with his lover, and here a similar scene is sketched in,
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu
The frozen potential, the moment before the climax, a method of dramatization seen in historical paintings. There is another line in this stanza that readers of Keats have been fond of and repeat as the particular mark of genius. That is,
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
This is one of those lines in poetry that I’ll use to demonstrate a certain rule. In poetry, there seems a rule of inverse proportion when it comes to figurative/metaphorical imagery. Sometimes poets give the reign of Reason to Fancy, and she eagerly flies off with a brush to paint beautiful, though increasingly meaningless, pictures. The more pleasing the “mellifluous sounds” charm our ear, often the more meaningless, confused, or simply trivial the thought is. Every writer who has gotten lost in the creative trance will know what I am talking about.
Keats falls right on the edge with this line, in part because it’s only a line. Though again, in confession to the weakness of this particular reader, a certain mood will have me receptive to different intuitive truths. The meaning of this line may sing its truth to me then, and make silent impressions upon the heart.
Another line worth the effort of resurrecting into your mind its reality:
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours
I am still deciphering what “pale-mouth’d” means in the context of the prophet. I think it may be a general lightness in hues of the mouth, of pinks and whites and reds, like the sweet roses of a Valentine bouquet. It says “no heat / of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming”; Perhaps the heat of excitement, if as a devoted worshiper, you travel with a small group composed of friends and strangers towards the presence of a truth-teller, and hearing in her words, hallow and deep, a strain of notes eternal, that spoke to the heart, and convinced you, more persuasive than conducive argument, that she was speaking, not about any thing, but the thing itself, as if temporarily possessed by its very spirit, she but a living outlet for immortal winds.
Keats, and poets generally, are at their best when they enter the very spirit of what they wish to write about, when the trappings and manacles of time, place, and contemporary beliefs melt from their consciousness. Far, far away from the worldly din: now we may step in time with the piping shepherd, or join that pagan congregation at the beginning of Keats’ “Endymion”, and walk through sacred woods. Bow your head to the eternal blessing of elements!
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Again, the dedicated acknowledgement of what these things actually mean to us on behalf of their existence as our sustenance and source of power.
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
He means new pathways of thought and sensation, which are the result of new experiences. There was a line in his letters that he wished for a “philosophical back garden” in his mind, a place of deeper repose, away from the world. “Branched thoughts” is how ideas are interconnected, as when we speak and can move from topic, to subtopic, to a new main topic. “Instead of pines” would be routine thoughts or beliefs that exist on utilitarian grounds. I mean substantial facts empty of spiritual significance. This is only my guess.
The next few lines paint for us the enchanted landscape and atmosphere. Here the poet again takes up his task of devotion to Psyche:
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
And proceeds to list all his gifts. There is a psychological insight in the lines:
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same
At surface level, these are literal flowers who do not yet symbolize a deity. On a deeper level, the flowers could be general pleasures, and that Fancy never breeds the same pleasure, or in other words, is always hopping from one new excitement to the next.
The poem ends in the resumption of the popular myth of Psyche and Cupid, the “warm Love” making his way to Psyche’s chamber, although I read that the poet is now incarnated as Cupid, and is letting himself through the casement.
