Ode to Psyche
At the age of 23, Keats left the hospital, losing his source of income, in order to devote himself to writing poetry.
His contemporary sources for the myth included John Lempriere's Classical Dictionary and Mary Tighe's Psyche, an 1805 work that Keats read as a child and returned to in 1818.
Dissatisfied, he turned to Apuleius's Golden Ass, translated by William Adlington in 1566, and read through the earlier version of the Cupid and Psyche myth.
Although Keats spent time considering the language of the poem, the choice of wording and phrasing is below that found within his later works, including Hyperion or the odes that followed.
[5] "Ode to Psyche" is important because it is Keats's first attempt at an altered sonnet form that would include longer more lines and would end with a message or truth.
[7] However, M. R. Ridley disputes that Keats favours Petrarch and claims that the odes incorporate a Shakespearean rhyme scheme.
These are then followed by a series of twelve lines that are modelled after the Shakespearean sonnet form, but lack the final couplet.
[10] In the original myth, Aphrodite punishes Psyche, a well admired girl, by having Cupid use his power to make her fall in love.
The narrator immediately recognizes Cupid and is astonished when he recognizes Psyche:[11] I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied: ...
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star, Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours;[12] The previous list of what Psyche lacks in terms of religious worship only describes external symbols of worship.
though too late for antique vows, Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs, Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retir'd From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
The narrator becomes the prophet for Psyche and says in the final stanza:[15] Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:[12] In the conclusion of the poem, the narrator metaphorically says that he will expand his consciousness, which would allow him to better understand both the good and the bad of the world.
This will allow the narrator to attain a new sense of inspiration while providing Psyche with a sanctuary:[16] And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!
The narrator's ability to witness the union is unique to Keats's version of the Psyche myth because the lovers in the original story were covered in darkness.
[26] Bennett implies that the word "wrung" in line one contains a double entendre as it also alludes to the "ringing in the ears" involved with active listening.
"[28] Robert Bridges, turn of the 19th-century literary critic, wrote "for the sake of the last section (l. 50 to end), tho' this is open to the objection that the imagery is work'd up to outface the idea—which is characteristic of Keats' manner.
Hence we either feel a disappointment about the 'Ode to Psyche' or else, remembering the care Keats supposedly gave it, we once more put the poem aside for future consideration.
