Ode
To Psyche- John Keats.
Summary.
Keats ‘s speaker opens the poem with an address
to the goddess Psyche, urging her to hear his words, and asking that she
forgive him for singing to her her own secrets. He says that while wandering
through the forest that very day, he stumbled upon “two fair creatures” lying
side by side in the grass, beneath a “whisp’ring roof” of leaves, surrounded by
flowers. They embraced one another with both their arms and wings, and though
their lips did not touch, they were close to one another and ready “past kisses
to outnumber.” The speaker says he knew the winged boy, but asks who the girl
was. He answers his own question: She was Psyche.
In the second stanza, the
speaker addresses Psyche again, describing her as the youngest and most
beautiful of all the Olympian gods and goddesses. He believes this, he says,
despite the fact that, unlike other divinities, Psyche has none of the
trappings of worship: She has no temples, no altars, no choir to sing for her,
and so on. In the third stanza, the speaker attributes this lack to Psyche’s
youth; she has come into the world too late for “antique vows” and the “fond
believing lyre.” But the speaker says that even in the fallen days of his own
time, he would like to pay homage to Psyche and become her choir, her music,
and her oracle. In the fourth stanza, he continues with these declarations,
saying he will become Psyche’s priest and build her a temple in an “untrodden
region” of his own mind, a region surrounded by thought that resemble the
beauty of nature and tended by “the gardener Fancy,” or imagination. He
promises Psyche “all soft delight” and says that the window of her new abode
will be left open at night, so that her winged boy ”the warm Love” can come in.
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