Irregular or Cowleyan Ode

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The Ode
English Verse

Irregular Ode or Cowleyan Ode, as the first name implies is an ode made up of a number of strophes that are unlike in structure. This verse is also sometimes called the Cowleyan Ode for 17th century English poet Abraham Cowley who studied the odes of Pindar and attempted to emulate them. But unlike Pindar, Cowley's odes did not relegate the various strophes to the triad order of the Pindaric Ode. Neither did it retain the uniform stanzas of the Horatian, Keatsian or Ronsardian Odes. 

The various strophes of the Irregular or Cowleyan Ode vary in purpose, line length, number of lines, meter, and rhyme. The frame of each strophe changes at the discretion of the poet.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth (1st 3 stanzas)
--------'The Child is father of the Man;
--------And I could wish my days to be
--------Bound each to each by natural piety.'
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
--------To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; -
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
II
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Links to other Odes

The Ode

• Odes named for poet or culture of their origin:
• The Aeolic Ode
• The Choral Ode or Pindaric Ode or Dorian Ode
• The Anacreontic Ode
• The Horatian Ode
• The Irregular or Cowleyan Ode
• The Keatsian or English Ode
• The Ronsardian Ode

Thematic Odes:

• Elegy, Obsequy, Threnody Ode
• Elemental Ode
• Genethliacum Ode
• Encomium or Coronation Ode
• Epithalamion or Epithalamium and Protholathiumis
• Palinode Ode
• Panegyric or Paean
• Triumphal Ode
• Occasional Verse