1. Sapphic odes, from the days of Sappho, have always been written in stanzas of the same form; being composed of lines of five feet metre, the second foot trisyllable, and three lines and a hemistic composing a stanza; as, in the following:

Thus her life ended, in her youthful vigour;
This her sad exit from a world of trouble;
She, by the muses and by bards lamented,
Ill fated Sappho.

Sapphic odes are always without rhyme: all other odes, in English verse, are written with rhyme. Those in common use, and which are distinguished by no particular name, designating their kind, are written on various subjects; and are various, also, in the forms of their sectional parts, or stanzas. Some of which I will cite examples of.

2. One kind of stanza which is used in odes is composed in six lines, thus:

"Ye fields of light, celestial plains,

Where gay transporting beauty reigns,
Ye scenes divinely fair!

Your Maker's wondrous power proclaim;
Tell how he form'd your shining frame,
And breath'd the fluid air."— Ogilvie.

3. Another kind of stanza is formed of eight lines, thus:

"Daughter of heaven, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone."

From an Ode to Adversity.— Gray.

4. Odes are sometimes composed in their sectional parts, of eight lines; the four first, and four last being alike in form. These are double stanzas, in our common way of speaking, being the quatrain stanza, or stanza of four lines, rhyming alternately, doubled. Of such, whatever we may call them, stanzas, or double stanzas, is the following:

"The hand that moves and regulates,
And guides the vast machine,
That governs wills, and times, and fates,
Retires and works unseen.
Angelic visitants forsake

Their amaranthine bowers;

On silent wings their stations take,
And watch the allotted hours."

The foregoing are some of the most common forms of the sectional parts, or stanzas of odes. There are many other forms in use, which it may not be necessary to insert. Nor may it be necessary to patronize or encourage a multiplicity of forms, so long as every minor bard, who can excel in nothing else, can display his ingenuity in writing poems, in odd fantastic forms.

For odes there are no prescribed forms: their sectional parts are various in form, according to the fancy of the poet. And I give my opinion that the simple forms are preferable to those which are lengthy and complex, either in odes or other poems; when the subject is of a simple nature, especially so.

We have odes which vary in their forms, and equally so in their subject matter. We have some called Anacreontic: these vary not in form from some others: they are only distinguished by being in imitation of Anacreon, in point of subject matter, — festive, amorous and gay.

5. To the above cited forms, I will add one more, which is simple in structure, and well adapted to odes, or any lyric compositions.

"O, see what wonders meet our eyes!
Another land, and other skies!

Columbian hills have met our view!
Adieu! Old England's shores, adieu!

Here, at length, our feet shall rest,

Hearts be free, and homes be blest."- Upham.

It may be remarked: odes are lyric poems; but all lyric poems are not odes. Odes differ from other poems in their subject matter, as they may not extend to every subject. They also differ in the form of their stanzas; as, in odes, a stanza must contain enough to make a full sentence, a complete sense, or kind of paragraph. In other poems, a stanza does not necessarily comprise so much. Hence, in odes the stanzas are longer, and consist of more lines than those of other poems. We may observe, however, that this kind of odes, which we are speaking of now, are unlike to Pindaric odes; and their sectional parts are also unlike; as we shall see in the next section.

SECTION V.-Pindaric Odes.

Pindaric odes are in imitation of Pindar, the Theban bard, and are irregular in their forms and formations; being composed of stanzas, or sectional parts, which are formed by no prescribed rules. Nor is the same process repeated, in these formations, from one to another, as in common stanzas. These, being so diverse, in their formations, from common stanzas, as to need another name; and they have another name, handed down from antiquity: they are called strophes.

After the manner of the antient Greeks, the first of those sectional parts, with which a poem begins, is called a strophe; the second, an antistrophe; and the third, an epode, &c. But, whatever may have been the causes which gave rise to those various names, in the Grecian prosody; we have no causes, and no marks of distinction, in our English odes, which make it necessary to retain those names, and to use them after the manner of the Greeks. Hence we infer, the term strophe is alone sufficient to express the sectional parts of an ode in our English compositions.

It is obvious, here, to notice the difference between a stanza and a strophe. A stanza, as we have seen, consists of a set form of verses, which form is continued, in regular succession, through the poem. The strophe consists of no set form, nor is the same form repeated.

The distinguishing and essential properties of the stanza are its form. The strophe has other marks of distinction, and other properties, aside from its form. Strophes are seen to contain the paragraphs, or sectional parts, of the subject matter of the poem. A strophe goes on with one topic, without regard to length, till the topic is ended. Another strophe goes on and goes through with another topic; the third with another, and so on till the poem is ended. But, not so with the stanza, which is only continued to complete the poem; and the topic is continued from stanza to stanza. These are the marks of distinction between stanzas and strophes, notwithstanding some stanzas, and those pertaining to odes, are longer than others; and notwithstanding the term stanza is sometimes used as a common name for both.

Pindaric odes are composed of strophes, which are long and irregular, and formed by no prescribed rules. Our English odes are in iambic verse, with lines of various lengths, and sometimes of from one foot to seven; having regular correspondences in rhyme, but not in metre.

As an example of this, I will cite a few strophes from one of our English Pindarics.

STROPHE I.

Now the black days of universal doom,
Which wondrous prophecies foretold, are come;
What strong convulsions, what stupendous woe,
Must sinking nature undergo,

Amidst the dreadful wreck, and final overthrow!
Methinks I hear her, conscious of her fate,
With fearful groans, and hideous cries,
Fill the presaging skies;
Unable to support the weight

Or of the present, or approaching miseries.
Methinks I hear her summon all

Her guilty offspring, raving with despair,
And trembling, cry aloud, prepare,
Ye sublunary powers, t' attend my funeral!

II.

See now the tragical portents,

Those dismal harbingers of dire events!
Loud thunders war, and darting lightnings fly
Through the dark concave of the troubled sky:
The fiery ravage is begun, the end is nigh.

See now the glaring meteors blaze!
Like baleful torches, O they come,

To light dissolving nature to her tomb!
And scattering round their pestilential rays,
Strike the affrighted nations with a wild amaze.
Vast sheets of flame, and globes of fire,
By an impetuous wind are driven

Through all the regions of the inferior heaven;
Till, hid in sulph'rous smoke, they seemingly expire.

To these I will add two more strophes, from the same ode, but not the next following.

VIII.

Amidst this dreadful hurricane of woes,
(For fire, confusion, horror, and despair,
Fill ev'ry region of the tortur'd earth and air)
The great archangel his loud trumpet blows;
At whose amazing sound fresh agonies
Upon expiring nature seize;

For now, she'll in few moments know,
The ultimate event, and fate of all below.
Awake, ye dead, awake, he cries,
(For all must come)

All that had human breath, arise,
To hear your last, unalterable doom.

IX.

At this, the ghastly tyrant, who had sway'd
So many ages, uncontroll'd,

No longer could his sceptre hold;

But gave up all, and was himself a captive made.
The scatter'd particles of human clay,

Which, in the silent grave's dark chamber lay,
Resume their pristine forms again,
And now, from mortal, grow immortal men.
Stupendous energy of sacred power,

Which can collect, wherever cast,
The smallest atoms, and that shape restore,
Which they had worn so many years before,

That through strange accidents, and numerous changes past. From Pomfret's ode on the general conflagration and ensuing judgment. The foregoing may serve as a specimen of the form of a Pindaric ode, and its component parts. Poems of this kind are of various forms: but not many of them, can be held up as perfect models, in point of form. The above cited strophes are not excepted from this remark. The point I allude to is, the arrangements of rhymes and metres. On this point, among other things, I shall remark in the

next section.

Pindaric odes are adapted to sublime subjects; and not many of our English poets have excelled in this kind of composition: among those who have, are Dryden, Gray, and a few others. Gray's ode entitled, "The Bard," is justly esteemed as one of our best English models.

SECTION VI.- Remarks, &c.

I have now gone through, in presenting specimens of the various forms of the sectional parts of poems, stanzas, strophes, &c., with their different arrangements of rhyme and metre, and with occasional remarks on the same. And, as some additional remarks on this subject may be necessary, I proceed to remark :

Those various forms, and various arrangements of rhyme and metre, are a modern improvement, almost wholly unknown to the antients. But improvements of this kind have a downward progress. In due proportion as these are mainly attended to, the nobler beauties of verse are diminished. These are shackles which tend to impede the excursions of genius, and were generally avoided by the antients, who were more attentive to the intrinsic and nobler beauties of verse, than to these external decorations. On this account, these shackles and impediments are commonly avoided by some of our best English poets. Thoughts, expression, and melody, the essential properties of verse, should never be subordinated to minor appendages.