Editing Ode (section)

==English ode==

The lyrics can be on various themes. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict form, were the ''Epithalamium'' and ''Prothalamium'' of [[Edmund Spenser]].<ref>{{EB1911 |last=Gosse |first=Edmund |author-link=Edmund Gosse |wstitle=Ode |volume=20 | pages = 1&ndash;2 |inline=1}}</ref>

In the 17th century, the original odes in English were by [[Abraham Cowley]]. These were [[Iamb (foot)|iambic]], but had irregular line length patterns and rhyme schemes. Cowley based the principle of his [[Pindarics|"Pindariques"]] on an apparent misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice but, nonetheless, others widely imitated his style, with notable success by [[John Dryden]].

With Pindar's metre being better understood in the 18th century, the fashion for Pindaric odes faded, though there are notable actual Pindaric odes by [[Thomas Gray]], [http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=pppo ''The Progress of Poesy''] and [http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=bapo ''The Bard''].

Around 1800, [[William Wordsworth]] revived Cowley's Pindaric for one of his finest poems, the ''[[Ode: Intimations of Immortality|Intimations of Immortality]]'' ode:

<blockquote><poem>
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more....
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home...
</poem></blockquote>

Others also wrote odes: [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], [[John Keats]], and [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] who wrote odes with regular stanza patterns. Shelley's ''[[Ode to the West Wind]]'', written in fourteen line [[terza rima]] stanzas, is a major poem in the form. Perhaps the greatest odes of the 19th century, however, were Keats's ''Five Great Odes of 1819'', which included "[[Ode to a Nightingale]]", "[[Ode on Melancholy]]", "[[Ode on a Grecian Urn]]", "[[Ode to Psyche]]", and "[[To Autumn]]". After Keats, there have been comparatively few major odes in English. One major exception is the fourth verse of the poem ''[[Ode of Remembrance|For the Fallen]]'' by [[Laurence Binyon]], which is often known as ''The Ode to the Fallen'', or simply as ''The Ode''.

[[W.H. Auden]] also wrote ''Ode'', one of the most popular poems from his earlier career when he lived in London, in opposition to people's ignorance over the reality of war. In an interview, Auden once stated that he had intended to title the poem ''My Silver Age'' in mockery of England's supposed imperial golden age, however chose ''Ode'' as it seemed to provide a more sensitive exploration of warfare.

''Ode on a Grecian Urn'', while an [[ekphrasis]], also functions as an ode to the artistic beauty the narrator observes. The English ode's most common [[rhyme scheme]] is ABABCDECDE.
Centuries were occasionally set to music. Composers such as [[Henry Purcell|Purcell]], [[Händel]] and [[William Boyce (composer)|Boyce]] all set English odes to music.