ODE ON MELANCHOLY:
STUDY QUESTIONS

• How would you pronounce “kiss’d” any differently than “kissed,” or “veil’d” differently than “veiled”? Explain why you do or do not think Keats was paid by the apostrophe.

• Early in this poem Keats tells his reader to not kill themselves with wolf’s-bane, which is known for repelling werewolves. Later, he tells the reader to go ahead and feed on his mistress’s eyes. Is he writing for werewolves? For vampires? Mummies? Surely he can’t be writing this poem for people, can he?

• Critics like to point out that Keats often used contrasts, such as “droop-headed flowers” and “the sadness of her might” and pleasure (“Pleasure”) that is turned to poison by bees’ mouths. Do you think this is because he wanted to capture the richness of life’s contradictions, or because he could not keep his ideas straight?

• Try to think up at least three different adjectives that describe an owl that would be even less relevant than whether or not it is “downy.”

• What do you glut your sorrow upon? Play Station? Mr. Pibb 10? Pringles? Write an essay that explains what Keats’s world view would have been like if he had lived in a time when he had advertisers to tell him what to like.