In the Library
Ode on Melancholy
John Keats, 1819
- Form
- Form Poem
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 5 minutes
- Chapters
- Chapters 1
- Length
- Length 0k words
£1.99
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Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
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About the book
"No, no, go not to Lethe": the poem opens by catching a sleeve, stopping a sufferer on the way to the poison cupboard. Wolf's-bane, nightshade, the ruby grape of Proserpine, the death-moth: Keats lays out the whole apothecary of oblivion only to knock it from the reader's hand. Numbness, he insists, wastes a good grief. When the melancholy fit falls, feed it instead on a morning rose, on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, on the wealth of globed peonies, on the peerless eyes of someone who is angry with you. Here is the poem's astonishing, almost greedy wisdom: sadness is not the opposite of delight but lives in its very temple, and only the one who can burst Joy's grape against the palate will ever taste her might. In three stanzas Keats says what a whole life is usually spent half-learning, that the beauty worth having is the beauty that must die, and that Joy stands forever with his hand at his lips, bidding adieu. The close hangs the soul among her cloudy trophies, conquered, and glad of it.