Lecturer : Dr.

Popa-Paris Andreea Mihai Anca Cristina Georgiana

Seminar on Neo-classical and Romantic Literatura Swedish A, IB, group 9

The Beauty of Melancholy in Ode of Melancholy by John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic writer whose poetry is characterised by sensual

imagery, mostly in the series of odes. “This is typical of romantic poets, as they emphasised

extreme emotion through an accentuation on natural imagery” i. In “Ode of Melancholy”,

Keats emphasised the specific mood presented in his poem, the melancholy, “a gloomy state

of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged; depression“ iialong with the beauty of this

mood.

The title of this poem suggests what it is as a lyrical gene and what it is about ; an ode

about melancholy. Using melancholy in the title emphasises romanticism seeing as showing

and expressing emotion was a specific characteristic for this current.

“Melancholy was viewed, for the longest time, as an illness. It was an imbalance in

the body’s humours, specifically an over-abundance of black bile, that led to ill temperament,

mood swings, anger, and a brooding disposition, which, for the discerning reader, might have

very well been the categorization of the entire Romantic period. John Keats, as a junior

doctor, would have almost certainly come into the definition and the treatment of melancholy

during his training, which is why this particular poem, “Ode of Melancholy”, is so interesting

in its writing.iii In “Ode of Melancholy”, the author comes up with coping mechanism in order

to deal with the turmoil within.

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 “The general idea of the poem is that sadness is to be found not in the ugly and painful

things of life, but in the beauty and pleasures of the world. Logically then true happiness

would also be found in contemplating the ugly and the painful things. If the pain of the

suffering is less acute than the pain of  knowing that beauty and joy will soon fade, the

pleasure of life is also less intense than the knowledge that it is pain which gives meaning to

it. Obviously, Keats seems to be preoccupied with the idea of seeking a heavy dose of

melancholy. But, he finds both problem and remedy in the same object. The remedy for

melancholy for common people would be something that makes them unconscious of sadness

and pain. To experience true melancholy then one must rather stimulate all senses. So

purifying the senses is not a way to experience melancholy. A More acute senses and more

consciousness can only make us experience true melancholy and tragedies of life.”iv

This poem is composed of three stanzas, being the shortest of odes written by Keats.

Before having been published, the poem had had four stanzas, the last one Keats decided to

remove. Moreveover, these three stanzas bring together vivid images of nature (clouds,

rainbows, flowers) and the classical world (temples, shrines, mythical figures).

The first stanza informs the reader not to do. The sufferer is told not to go to Lethe or

to forget their sadness. Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. Thus, the

reason he should not ignore this feeling.

“Moreover, the sufferer should not commit suicide or get suicidal ideation

(nightshade, “the ruby grape of Prosperpine,” is a poison; Prosperpine is the mythological

queen of the underworld); and should not become obsessed with objects of death and misery

(the beetle, the death-moth, and the owl). For, the speaker says, that will make the anguish of

the soul drowsy, and the sufferer should do everything he can to remain aware of and alert to

the depths of his suffering.” v

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 In this case, nightshade represents death. Beetle shows compromise as the only way

that the reader and the writer can keep their integrity and beliefs in balance. Thus, beetle

meaning insists that he must find a way to get himself out of the sadness he is in. Only then

can the reader be a harbor of sanity in the midst of the insanity vi. The death moth represents

vulnerability, a trait that the author is aware of and suggests embracing. Also, the owl

suggests, apart from wisdom, the ability to see what others cannot see. Thus, such animal

represents in the Keats’ ode the capacity of being able to see through death, to appreciate

feeling both high and low.

”Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d/ By nightshade, ruby grape of Prorsepine/

Make not your rosary of yew-berries” warns the reader against commiting suicide again,

seeing as nightshade is poisonous as mentioned above, but it is beneficial in small doses, as a

drug. Furthermore, it is interpreted as a drug as well; the author advises against suicide and

drugs. The speaker makes an allusion to Greek mythology here when he calls nightshade the

"ruby grape of Proserpine." . Proserpine was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility.

“In the second stanza, the speaker tells the sufferer what he should do when affected

by melancholy; the sufferer should instead overwhelm his sorrow with natural beauty,

glutting it on the morning rose, “on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,” or in the eyes of his

beloved.” vii

”Then glut thy sorrow as a morning rose/ Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,/ Or

on the wealth of globed poenies” refers to feeding our sorrow on beautiful things when we are

struck by melancholy with beautiful things such as roses or poenies. Roses symbolize love

and passion meaning one should love themself in order to overcome melancholy.

Keats has suggested all sensuous techniques for experience: "glut thy sorrow" for the

gustatory (taste), "imprison her soft hand" for the tactile (touch), "let her rave" for the aural

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(hearing), "thy missess some rich anger shows" for the visual and "morning rose" for

connotation of the olfactory (smelling) perception. In this way, he has suggested the reader to

seek ‘sensuous’ stimulants of joy to realize how all these objects of pleasure lead us naturally

into the anguish of the 'soul' through the tragic consciousness of their transience. viii

` In this way, Keats finds a way of getting to the true experience of melancholy through

joy – the opposite. It is, with no doubt, an antithesis between the first two stanzas.By contrast,

it contains images of beauty and happiness on which anyone should ‘glut thy sorrow’. These

images are characterised either by their fleeting quality (‘rainbow’, ‘cloud’, ‘sand-wave’,

‘anger’) or by their dark associations (‘April shroud’ and the idea of imprisoning the

mistress’s ‘soft hand’. Thus images of beauty are intermixed with images of melancholy. ix

Rainbow is the symbol of enlightment, beauty out of tragedy. In this context, it

represents the beauty out of melancholy. The cloud hides the light that has to come after rain.

Furthermore, metaphorically speaking, the melancholy hides the happiness people hold in or

the happiness they are capable of showing.

In the third stanza, the speaker explains the injunctions, saying that pleasure and pain

are inextricably linked: Beauty must die, joy is fleeting, and the flower of pleasure is forever

“turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.” The speaker says that the shrine of melancholy

is inside the “temple of Delight,” but that it is only visible if one can overwhelm oneself with

joy until it reveals its center of sadness, by “burst[ing] Joy’s grape against his palate fine.”

The man who can do this shall “taste the sadness” of melancholy’s might and “be among her
x
cloudy trophies hung.”

The third stanza is in allegory seeing as the philosophical ideas are transformed into

characters : Melancholy is personified as “a female goddess” along with Joy, Pleasure and

Beauty, the cheerful trio. Each of them has a melancholic part deep within. The reader must

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understand that even joy is sorrowful sometimes. Joy and pleasure belong to melancholy, thus

the gloomy state of mind includes all of them. One cannot have sadness without joy nor joy

without sadness.

The knowledge of the whole transcends ignorant pleasures or simple oblivion. The

choice lies between oblivion and awareness. Though pain is the price of awareness, what

makes the pain bearable in Keats' view is his implied affirmative that experience itself both of

the pleasant and the painful alike is valuable. Experience itself is to be savored for its own

sake. The reality of life, which it is made up of such inextricable opposites, is to be favored

above a one-sided quest for temporary pleasure, oblivion or masochistic search for

melancholy.xi

This means that it is fine to long for a less pleasant state of mind. The person who can

experience the intensity of joy can experience melancholy, and vice versa.According to Helen

Vendler, Melancholy is longed for as a “mythological partner of sorrow”xii, in the second as“
xiii
the mistress of human erotic desire and love-melancholy” and the last as a “conquering
xiv
allegory“. Melancholy’s beauty is meant to die once it is lost. ”She dwells with

beauty/Beauty that must die”. As the critic Helene Vendler mentions, to feel and experiece

emotions not in extremes, but in duality is the right way of accepting states of mind. This is

what happens in the third stanza. Pleasure and pain are connected to each other. Even though

the author is in a bad state of mind, he feels pleasure by being like that as he compromises his

feelings to only one.He accepts that sometimes he may be feeling in a more different way than

just joyful. These feelings are connected, the dreams, the light and the dark all collide.

(“Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips ”)

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 In conclusion, the author presents the beauty of a feeling that has been said to be an

illness over time. He demonstrates that there is actually beauty from the pain, from the

melancholy.

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i
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
ii
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/melancholy
iii
Ellise Dali on https://poemanalysis.com/ode-on-melancholy-john-keats-poem-analysis/)

iv
Shrestha, Roma. "Ode on Melancholy by John Keats: Summary and Analysis." BachelorandMaster, 2 Aug. 2017,
bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/ode-on-melancholy.html.
v
https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section5/
vi

https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section5/

vii

viii
Shrestha, Roma. "Ode on Melancholy by John Keats: Summary and Analysis." BachelorandMaster, 2 Aug. 2017,
bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/ode-on-melancholy.html.

ix
Imagery and symbolism in Ode to Melancholy, 2019 https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2993

x
Imagery and symbolism in Ode to Melancholy, 2019 https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2993

xi
Imagery and symbolism in Ode to Melancholy, 2019 https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2993

xii
Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats, Harvard University Press, 1983, page 174
xiii
Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats, Harvard University Press, 1983, page 174
xiv
Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats, Harvard University Press, 1983, page 174

Bibliography
Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats, Harvard University Press, 1983
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/melancholy
Ellise Dali on https://poemanalysis.com/ode-on-melancholy-john-keats-poem-analysis/)

Shrestha, Roma. "Ode on Melancholy by John Keats: Summary and Analysis." BachelorandMaster, 2 Aug.
2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/ode-on-melancholy.html.

https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section5/

Imagery and symbolism in Ode to Melancholy, 2019 https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-