What is an ode?

An ode is one of poetry's
formal types, or forms, and is a kind of a broader form of poetry called
lyric poem. A lyric poem is often rhymed, but need not be,
and expresses the feelings and emotions of the poet. It is the emotive characteristic of
lyric poems that make them so appealing. Odes have their own formal requirements, or
requirements of form. The Pindaric and
Horatian odes have three parts, the
strophe,
antistrophe, and
epode, while the
Irregular ode may have some or all of the traditional
elements while being longer.

In the opening stanza of the ode, the
strophe, there is a complex scheme of rhythmic meter and
rhyme. The second stanza, the antistrophe, mirrors the
scheme of the first, and the third, the epode, has a
different metrical scheme structure altogether. An ode speaks in a lofty manner to an
event, object, or person that is absent, thus not present with the poetic speaker. This
can be illustrated by Wordsworth's long-titled ode to an event, "Ode on Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." It may also be illustrated by
Keats's ode to an object, "Ode on a Grecian Urn." It is further illustrated by Robert
Lowell's long Irregular ode to sailors, "The Quaker Graveyard in
Nantucket."