Ode on Melancholy

Centuries before the popular idea of “feel your feelings,” Keats’s speaker gives this psychological advice to the addressee of “Ode on Melancholy.” The best things in life—Beauty (Line 21), Joy (Line 22), and Pleasure (Line 23)—are not permanent. It is understandable to be sad when these experiences leave us, “bidding adieu” (Line 23). The speaker suggests that the way to handle this experience is to own your sadness as present and necessary.

The speaker’s first advice centers on not becoming so drugged by despair that you sublimate your feelings or give in to the desire to obliterate yourself. “Wakeful anguish” (Line 10) is better than either trying to forget the melancholy or poisoning yourself with “[w]olf’s-bane” (Line 2). Instead, the speaker suggests turning whole-heartedly into sensuous and aesthetic experience, feeling fully both ecstasy and pain. Even when sadness comes like a “shroud” (Line 14), the world remains beautiful, whether in rainbows, sand, or flowers—small, specific, individual natural phenomena are easier to discern as beautiful than large sweeping vistas like “the green hill” (Line 14). The brave man doesn’t hesitate to “burst Joy’s grape against his palate” (Line 28).

Plunging into experience like this does not prevent Melancholy, since once the “Joy’s grape” (Line 28) is eaten, behind it sits the shadow of sadness once more.