the weight of tradition and offer them fresh inspiration without
enslaving their imaginations to exacting rules. The vernacular
ode was, however, roughly the same sort of poem as the
humanist ode, from which it learned much. It was basically a
formal, public or social poem, usually occasional, celebrating
something. It was of moderate length, stanzaic, eulogistic, and
philosophic or learned, reflecting on life by means of highly
wrought imagery, mythology, and aphorism. And it was, as a
true child of the Renaissance, always conscious of its classical
tradition. ¹

The history of the ode is one of the longest ones among
literary genres. Of forms of any scope only the epic and the
hymn, closely related to the ode, have longer histories, and it is
interesting to note that the earliest odes, those of Pindar, are
both close to the epic in tone and intimately connected with
religion.

Since any understanding of the modern ode is dependent
upon a knowledge of its classical antecedents, the following
chapter will examine the works of Pindar, Anacreon, and
Horace.

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