Love And Love In Keats's Ode To Psyche

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Recommended: John Keats as a nature poet

Poets commonly employ verse for praise or some degree of adoration. There lacks rarity of odes applauding love, time and attractive lovers; however, odes concerning the idea of the soul are quite scarce. In “Ode to Psyche, Keats elicits the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche to celebrate the union of a mortal Psyche and a god Cupid. Not unique to many of Keats’ work, the poem praises the unconventional yet stimulating. Keats’ lush imagery effectively depicts the speaker’s undying devotion to the eventual goddess of the soul though he is but mortal. Through replacement, the speaker becomes a priest of Psyche in that his mind serves as a sanctuary for Psyche, where he devotes himself to magnifying his consciousness through her inspiration.
In the first and second stanza, the speaker describes witnessing two individuals in an embrace neither in a state of separation nor a state of union. He immediately recognizes the winged boy, but is astonished to discover Psyche, “ But who was thou, O happy, happy dove?” (22). They are in a state of Eden enfolded by lush imagery and cool rooted flowers. A sense of serenity encapsulates the lovers, “ The lips touched not but had not bade adieu” (11). The lovers exist in a state of symmetry; they are neither detached nor adjoined but instead are surrounded by their own essence, their “aurorean love” (13). The third stanza reads effortlessly and with little disturbance. The speaker communicates this ease through the soft syllabic “s” sounds repeated frequently throughout the stanza. Keats also employs the delicate adjectives of “hush’d” “fragrant-eyed” and “soft-handed” to show the delicate state in which the two lovers, Psyche and the winged figure, exist. In line 23, the speaker states “His Psyche tr...

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...th his psyche, his soul. Similarly, through her inspiration he will expand his consciousness and praise her by allowing the “warm Love in” (68).
Through the technical irregularities evident in the number of lines, rhyme scheme and even meter in each respective stanza, Keats constructs a playful sense about the poem; the poem develops to be more spontaneous than structured. Keats’ imagery contributes to the dreamlike sense about the poem and stresses the natural beauty of Psyche or the soul. The speaker experiences a journey realizing his desire to become a priest of Psyche, a worshipper of Psyche and inadvertently of his own soul. He transforms from questioning the lack of excitement surrounding Psyche to eventually igniting his own. The speaker becomes a priest of Psyche because he is able to praise his psyche himself without relying on the efforts of others.

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