3. ODE ON MELANCHOLY

John Keats’ Ode on Melancholy has an abstract speaker. As a reader you do not know the age or sex of the speaker. The speaker gives advice to an unknown person in the same manor as a general audience. At the end you feel that the speaker had already told this to the unknown person and continues to explain that person’s fate. Telling them not to choose death as an answer to mourning. The speaker appears to have values, be reliable and cares for the audience they are talking to. The situation appears to be that a person is mourning for someone they once loved, “A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries” (line 8). The mourning person has been lured by the idea of death, “Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be” (line 6) to end their own personal misery or loss. A theme throughout the poem is death and another is taking one’s own life because of a loved ones death.
A poetic element Keats uses is sound and rhyme. Ode on Melancholy does not use assonance, consonance, or alliteration: the repetitions of sounds and letters within a line. Keats rhymes the last word of every line with another line, a rhyme scheme. There was not as much of a sound repetition as there is rhyme. The rhymes were mostly written naturally since it was not a constant repeating of two lines in a row. Keats did not force the sound or tone because of the chosen rhyme scheme he uses. There is a rhyme scheme repeated throughout ten lines. The first and third lines and the second and forth lines rhyme. Then the fifth and eighth, sixth and ninth, and seventh and tenth lines rhyme. The rhyme scheme repeats a total of three times. I feel that the rhyme is an appropriate tone for poem. The poem is mellow along with the rhyme that was used.
I did enjoy the poem. I felt that the diction used made it difficult at times to understand Keats point of view. The abstract use of speaker to audience made it an interesting way for the reader to interpret the poem. I enjoyed the foreshadowing that began to explain the reason for the people in the end of the poem. I thought it was a thought out poem that made you think about not only the person that you were reading about but also relating it to real life. Losing a loved one is never easy and for someone to want to end their own life for that other person show’s a “Romeo and Juliet” love for one another. A passionate death.