Ode on Melancholy

While studying at Enfield, Keats attempted to gain a knowledge of Grecian art from translations of Tooke's Pantheon, Lempriere's Classical Dictionary and Spence's Polymetis.

[4] It was: Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones, And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail To find the Melancholy—whether she Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.

[6] But Thomas McFarland, while acknowledging the importance of the original first stanza to Keats's endeavor, openly praises the removal of the lines as an act of what he calls "compression".

McFarland believes that the poem's strength lies in its ability to avoid the "Seemingly endless wordage of "Endymion" and lets the final stanza push the main themes on its own.

[10] By removing unnecessary information such as the reason the poet suggests the trip to Lethe, Keats allows the reader to avoid the "fancy" aspects that would have appeared in the first line and were not sustained throughout the rest of the text.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.