Ode on Indolence
The poem is one of five composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. The poem describes the state of indolence, a word which is synonymous with ‘avoidance’ or ‘laziness’ Three figures are presented—Ambition, Love and Poesy—dressed in ‘placid sandals’ and ‘white robes’
About Ode on Indolence in brief
The poem is one of five composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. The poem describes the state of indolence, a word which is synonymous with ‘avoidance’ or ‘laziness’ The poem is an example of Keats’s break from the structure of the classical form. Three figures are presented—Ambition, Love and Poesy—dressed in ‘placid sandals’ and ‘white robes’ The narrator examines each using a series of questions and statements on life and art. The narrator concludes with the narrator giving up on having all three of the figures as part of his life. It was not published until 1848, 27 years after his death. Some critics regard “Ode on Indolence” as inferior to the other four 1819 odes. Others suggest that the poem exemplifies a continuity of themes and imagery characteristic of his more widely read works, and provides valuable biographical insight into his poetic career. It relies on ten line stanzas with a rhyme scheme that rhymed with a quatrain with a Miltonic set. This pattern is used in the poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale and a Grecian Urn’, which further unifies their structure in addition to their themes. It contains a complicated use of assonance, as evident in line 19, ‘O why did ye did not melt, and leave my sense of sense?’ The poem ends with a Shakespearian Shout and ends with ‘A third time, and they’d pass, and turn, in the third, which’d pass by, and pass, in a turn, and in a passing, and the third pair of pairs of sounds, which share the same vowel sounds in the second line, the third pairs in the fourth and the fifth, and so on’ It was written during a time when Keats was presumably more than usually occupied with his material prospects.
After finishing the spring poems, Keats wrote in June 1819 that its composition brought him more pleasure than anything else he had written that year. Unlike the other odes he wrote that year, “Oen on Indlence” was notpublished until 18 48, 27 year after Keats’ death. It has been variously thought to be the first, second, and final of the five 1819 Odes. It is known that Keats had left his poorly paid position as a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, Southwark, London, to devote himself to poetry. He may have written the ode as early as March 1819, but the themes and stanza forms suggest May orJune 1819; when it is known he was working on “O de on a GRecian Urm”, ‘O De on Melancholy’ and ‘O de to Psyche’ It is not known when the poem was written, although some scholars have proposed several different orders of composition, arguing that the poems form a sequence within their structures.
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This page is based on the article Ode on Indolence published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
