Ode to Psyche

The ode is written mostly in iambic pentameter. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A pentameter consists of five poetic feet. The first line of the first stanza provides an example: “O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung.” All four stanzas have some shorter lines too: “A brooklet, scarce espied” (Line 12) and “The winged boy I knew” (Line 21) are trimeters (three poetic feet), and Line 23 (“His Psyche true!”) is a dimeter (two poetic feet). The identical Lines 31 and 45 (“Upon the midnight hours”) are also trimeters, as are Lines 33 and 35 (“From chain-swung censer teeming” and “Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming”), Lines 47 and 49 (“From swinged censer teeming” and “Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming”), and Lines 65 and 67 (“That shadowy thought can win” and “To let the warm Love in”).

There are occasional metrical irregularities, mostly in the inversion of the first foot in a spondee (two stressed syllables), as in “Blue, silver-white (Line 14). More commonly there is a trochee (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable), as in “Holy the air” (Line 39), “Fluttering among” (Line 42), and “Yes, I” (Line 50).