Ode to Psyche

In this ode, the story basis on the psyche is a famous myth. Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful daughter of a king. She was so beautiful that Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was jealous of her. She dispatched her son. Eros the god of love to punish Psyche for being so beautiful. But Eros was so startled by Psyche’s beauty that he pricked himself with his own arrow and fell in love with her. Eros summoned Psyche to his palace, but he remained invisible to her, coming to her only and night and ordering her never to try to see his face. One night Psyche lit a lamp in order to catch a glimpse of her lover, but Eros was so angry with her for breaking his trust that he left her. Psyche was forced to perform a number of difficult tasks to placate. Venus and win back Eros as her husband. The word ‘Psyche’ is Greek for ‘soul’ and it is not difficult to imagine why Keats would have found the story attractive the story of the woman, so beautiful that love fell in love with her.                           

 Additionally; as Keats observed, the myth of Psyche was first recorded by Apuleius in the second century and is thus much more recent than, most myths. It is so recent, infect, that Psyche never worshipped as a real goddess, that slight is what compeers Keats’s speaker to dedicate himself to becoming her temple, her priest and her prophet, all in one. So he has found a way to move beyond the numbness of indolence and has discovered a goddess to worship. To worship Psyche, Keats summons all the resources of his imagination. He will give to Psyche a region of his mind. Where his thoughts will transforms into the sumptuous natural beauties Keats imagine will attract Psyche to her bower in his mind. Taken by itself, “Ode to Psyche” is simply a song to love and the creative imagination in the full contexts of the odes, it represents a crucial step between “Ode on I indolence” and “Ode to Nightingale” the speaker has become preoccupied with creativity but his imagination is still directed toward wholly internal ends. He wants to partake of divine permanence by taking his goddess into himself; he has not yet become interested in the outward imaginative expression of art.