I need a good one to use as an example of what an ode is.

Google ode and Keats.

Oh yes, thank you! I believe it was this poem that the book (and movie) Tender is the Night comes from.


John Keats (1795-1821)

Ode to a Nightingale


1My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
2 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
3Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
4 One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
5'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
6 But being too happy in thine happiness,--
7 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
8 In some melodious plot
9 Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
10 Singest of summer in full-throated ease.


11O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
12 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
13Tasting of Flora and the country green,
14 Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
15O for a beaker full of the warm South,
16 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
17 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
18 And purple-stained mouth;
19 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
20 And with thee fade away into the forest dim:


21Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
22 What thou among the leaves hast never known,
23The weariness, the fever, and the fret
24 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
25Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
26 Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
27 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
28 And leaden-eyed despairs,
29 Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
30 Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.


31Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
32 Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
33But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
34 Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
35Already with thee! tender is the night,
36 And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
37 Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
38 But here there is no light,
39 Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
40 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.


41I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
42 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
43But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
44 Wherewith the seasonable month endows
45The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
46 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
47 Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
48 And mid-May's eldest child,
49 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
50 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.


51Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
52 I have been half in love with easeful Death,
53Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
54 To take into the air my quiet breath;
55 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
56 To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
57 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
58 In such an ecstasy!
59 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
60 To thy high requiem become a sod.


61Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
62 No hungry generations tread thee down;
63The voice I hear this passing night was heard
64 In ancient days by emperor and clown:
65Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
66 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
67 She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
68 The same that oft-times hath
69 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
70 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.


71Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
72 To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
73Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
74 As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
75Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
76 Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
77 Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
78 In the next valley-glades:
79 Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
80 Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

I got a get-well card once that said:


FRONT - "Ode to a Friend"

INSIDE - "Get Well, Ode Friend"