The symbols in use in the lodges for the purpose of imparting instruction are: the All-Seeiimg Eye, representing the omniscience of God; the Skull end Cross Bones, a reminder of mortality; the Three Links, representing Friendship, Love, and Truth; the Scythe, denoting man's fading char acter; the Bow and Arrows and Quircr, designat ing the feeling of mutual defense to be cultivated; the Bundle of Rods, emblem of strength in union; the Heart and Hand, incentives to love and mercy; the Globe, man's earthly home: the Ark of the Covenant, the repository of God's grace and His goodness to man; the Serpent, teaching the wisdom of prudence: the Scales and Sword, emblematic o( justice; the Bible, the source of truth; the Hour-glass, the flight of time; and the Coffin, emblematic of death.
The emblems in use in the Encampment and Patriarchs Militant are as follows: the Three Pillars, representative of Faith, Hope, and Char ity; the Tent, hospitality; the Altar of Sacrifice, reminder of the simple worship offered by the Patriarchs; the Tables of Stone, the Ten Com mandments; the Pilgrim's Scrip, Sandals, and Staff, representing the journey of life; the Crown, the Patriarch's power and dignity; and the Shep herd's Crook and Warrior's Sword, defense of t he helpless.
The emblems of the Rebekah degree are the Bee Hire, representing order and industry; the Dore, constancy; the Moon and Seven Stars, denoting national truth; and the Lily, emblem of purity.
The results shown by the records of the order in the fulfillment of the objects of its existence. viz. the visitation of the sick, the relief of the distressed, the burial of the dead. and the educa tion of the orphan, from 1S30 to the close of the year 1901, are as follows: There were, besides the Sovereign Grand T.odge, 6 mmki-independent Grand Lodges in foreign countries; 66 Grand Lodges in the United States and Canada ; 55 Grand Encampments; 12.792 subordinate lodges; 2780 subordinate encampments; 1,002,272 lodge members; 145,138 encampment members; 40 Rebekah assemblies; 5756 Rebekah lodges; 373, 65:3 Rebekah lodge members; number of members relieved, 2,565,904; and widowed families suc cored, 256,606. The total revenue for the period was $240,430,422, and the total expenditure for relief $92,665,214. The chief officer of the order is known as the Grand Sire.
ODE (Lat. ode, ode, from Gk. (:,d', song, from acdein, (Merv, adein, to sing). Origi nally, a poem to be snug to the accompaniment of some musical instrument, as the lyre. The poem and the music were inseparable. The simpler form of the Greek ode for a single voice was cultivated by Sappho, Alcmus, Anacreon, and other ..Eolian .pouts. The choral ode to be sung, not by a single voice, but by a group, was in vented by the Dorians. To .Aleman of Sparta belongs the innovation of dividing the chorus into two parts, called the strophe (the turn) and the antistrophe (the counter-turn), in which the performers turn to the right and to the left, the one group answering the other. Stesi chorus of Sicily added a third part called the epode (after-song), which was sung by the en tire chorus after their movements to the right and to the left. The choral ode, consisting thus of the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode, was adapted by Simonides of Ceos to the war like Dorian music. He was followed by l'indar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece. Of Pindar's
work there are extant, besides several fragments, forty-four odes of victory, composed for the na tional games. Each ode has its own complicated metrical structure, corresponding to its own music. The simpler Greek measures were imi tated in Latin by Catullus and Horace. See GREEK _Music, The modern ode, dating from the Renaissance, was inspired by Horace and Pindar. It has, of course, undergone many modifications, consequent upon the divorce of verse and musical accom paniment. But it generally shows whence it came by its stanzaic structure and its direct address to some person or object. It is lofty in theme, and more impersonal than the ordinary lyric. Among the first English writers of odes, in imitation of Horace or Pindar, or of both, are Ben Janson, Crashaw, Alilton, Cowley, Mar vell, Dryden, Collins, and Gray. Marvell's ode on the return of Cromwell from Ireland is one of the best in the Horatian manner; but Gray best understood l'indar. Gray divides his Progress of Poesy into three stanzas, each having forty-one lines; each stanza is further divided into strophe, antistrophe, and epode; and the three parts of each stanza are identical in form. Collins, with admirable art, employed a less elaborate structure, and most English poets have followed him rather than Gray. Indeed, the ode as now written is only a succession of stanzas in lines of varying length and metre. These stanzas, in verse and rhyme, may pursue either a regular or an irregular order, so falling into one or the other of the two great classes into which modern odes are divided. Each type creates its own specific forms. which in either case may be of an almost endless variety; but in the regular ode the stanzaic form is either the same from stanza to stanza, or varies accord ing to a fixed principle, while in the irregular ode the form is determined solely by the poet's varying mood and alters in the freest manner from versr to verse and from stanza to stanza. The irregular ode is thus the most purely sub jective of lyric forms and capable of the most delicate adjustments of music and mood: but, because of its very pliancy, it is also perhaps the one form iu which success is least often at tained. Of musical setting; for odes the most famous are those of Purcell, twenty-eight in num ber, and the four by Handel.
Among the great English odes of the nineteenth century are Wordsworth's To Duty and Intima tbms of Immortality; Coleridge's To France; Shelley's To the West Wind, To Liberty, To Naples, and To a Skylark ; Keats's To a Nightin gale, To .4 utumn, and On a Grecian Urn; Tenny son's On the Death of the Duke of Wellington; and Swinburne'; To Victor Hugo. Among those produced in the United States there are Bryant's To a Waterfowl, Thr Winds, and Hymn of a City; and Lowell's great Commemoration Ode to those who fell in the Civil War. As an occasional poem addressed to a friend, the ode is cultivated by many poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Consult: English Odes. selected (London, 1881): Great Odes, English and .tmeriean, selected by Sharp ( Canter bury Poets) ; and for more recent odes, the poems of Coventry Patmore and William Watson. See also the various poets mentioned in this article, and LYRIC POETRY.