The earliest modern writer to perceive the value of the antique ode was Ronsard, who attempted to recover the fire and volume of Pindar ; his principal experiments date from 1550 to 1552. The poets of the Plefad (q.v.) recognized in the ode one of the forms of verse with which French prosody should be enriched, but in their use of Greek words crudely introduced, and in their quanti tative experiments, they offended the genius of the French lan guage. The ode died in France almost as rapidly as it had come to life. Early in the 19th century the form was resumed, and we have the Odes composed between 1817 and 1824 by Victor Hugo, the odes of Lamartine, those of Victor de Laprade (col lected in 1844), and the Odes funambulesques of Theodore de Banville (1857).
The earliest odes in English, using the word in its strict form, were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium of Spenser. Ben Jon son introduced a kind of elaborate lyric to which he gave the name of ode; and some of his disciples, in particular Randolph, Cartwright and Herrick, followed him. The "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," begun by Milton in 1629, may be considered an ode, and his lyrics "On Time" and "At a Solemn Music" belong to the same category. But it was Cowley who introduced into English poetry the ode consciously built up, on a solemn theme and as definitely as possible on the ancient Greek pattern. He was no more perspicacious than others, however, in observing what the rules were which Pindar had followed. He published his "Pindaric" odes in 1656. These shapeless pieces became very popular after the Restoration, and enjoyed the sanc tion of Dryden in three or four irregular odes which are the best of their kind in the English language. In 1705 Congreve published
a Discourse on the Pindarique Ode, and he wrote odes, in strophe, antistrophe and epode, which were the earliest of their kind in English ; unhappily they were not very poetical. The attempts of Gilbert West (1703-56) to explain the prosody of Pindar inspired Gray to write his "Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard" (1756). Collins, meanwhile, had in published a collec tion of odes devised in the Aeolian or Lesbian manner. The odes of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Tennyson are entirely irregular. Shelley desired to revive the pure manner of the Greeks, but he understood the principle of the form so little that he began his "Ode to Naples" with two epodes, passed on to two strophes, and then indulged in four successive antistrophes. Coventry Patmore, in 1868, printed a volume of irregular Odes. Swinburne, although some of his odes, like those of Keats, are really elaborate lyrics, written in a succession of stanzas identical in form, cultivated the Greek form also, and some of his political odes follow very closely the type of Bacchylides and Pindar. Neither Sir William Watson nor Laurence Binyon, each of whom has written memo rable odes in more recent times, has adopted the Pindaric form.
See Philipp August BOckh, De metris Pindari (18u); Wilhelm Christ, Metrik der Griechen and Romer (1874) Edmund Gosse, English Odes 088*