22 pages • 44 minutes read
John KeatsOde to Psyche
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1820A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cupid and Psyche
The mythological figure of Psyche is the dominant symbol of the poem. She symbolizes the soul or mind. Cupid is the god of love, and as such he symbolizes love in the ode. Whereas Psyche is ever-present in the ode, Cupid is mentioned only once and not directly by name. He is the “The winged boy” (Line 21) whom Keats’s speaker recognizes immediately, and he and Psyche are calmly embracing—an image of mutual love in a moment of repose. The final two lines anticipate but do not actually show the presence of Cupid. The speaker fully realizes the essence of the goddess—the fully developed soul or mind. Within themselves, they have created the condition for lovers to be united, for “warm Love” (Line 67) to enter. The symbolism of Cupid and Psyche together, then, brings out a fuller dimension of the ode. It is love, not just soul or mind, that is given the last word.
The Imagination
Keats valued the imagination enormously for its essential role in poetry. He wrote in one of his letters:
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not [. . .] The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth (“To Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817.” In Letters of John Keats, edited by Robert Gittings, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 36-37).
Adam’s dream is a reference to Book 8 of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost in which Adam dreamed of Eve, and when he awoke the newly created woman stood before him.
The work of the imagination is an implicit motif throughout the ode as Keats’s speaker conjures up the presence of Psyche. It is particularly noticeable in the first stanza. In the lines: “Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see / The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?” (Lines 5-6), the speaker speculates about the nature of their experience of Psyche. In light of the rest of the poem, the implication is that they were not dreaming, but that they perceived Psyche through a moment of imaginative insight. This gives them the confidence to develop their vision of Psyche’s actual presence in the “untrodden region” (Line 51) of their mind in the fourth stanza.
Music
The ancient gods were worshipped with music, choirs, solo voices, and instruments such as lutes and pipes, as the speaker of the ode makes clear. Keats’s speaker, knowing that Psyche has never had the delight of hearing music intended for her, resolves to make it up to her, and music thus becomes a recurring motif. This is apparent from the very beginning of the ode, when they refer in a self-deprecating way to their “tuneless numbers” (Line 1). This is merely a way of saying, as worshippers in all ages have done, that their feeble offerings are unworthy of the greatness of the god, even though they are the very best they can manage. The speaker makes it clear that their entire appeal to Psyche in what follows is a song, which they sing: “Even into thine own soft-conched ear” (Line 4). It is a soft, intimate song, intended only for her—a kind of lover’s offering. Later, the speaker declares that they are fully aware of her splendor: “I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d” (Line 43), and asks that she will allow him to be “thy choir, and make a moan / Upon the midnight hours; / Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe” (Lines 44-46). Seen in this light, the ode is one long song to the goddess, pouring out from a worshipful heart.
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By John Keats
