John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"
Students must familiarize themselves the definition of an ode when they study John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”. An ode is written in praise of or dedicated to a beloved that inspires the poet. The ode is elaborate, dignified, and imaginative; it is directed to a single purpose and deals with one theme. Keats writes odes mostly in iambic pentameters, to combine the heroic quatrain (or first quatrain of an English Sonnet) with the sestet of an Italian Sonnet: abab cde cde, also called Keatsian Ode (or English Ode).