Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
Form and Meter
Keats was not only a big fan of odes, he was a fan of writing them in a pretty specific form. Just take a gander at how the poem spreads out on the page. We have six ten-line stanzas, and the lines...
Speaker
We don't know much about the speaker, but we're willing to bet his favorite animal would be the sloth. A big fan of lounging around and doing nothing (much like the sloth, who sleeps about 15-20 ho...
Setting
The poem has two settings: in the speaker's head—where visions of Love, Ambition, and Poesy dance—and a lovely, lazy summer morning, which the speaker spends either in bed or under a tree. As t...
Sound Check
The poem might praise laziness, but the style is anything but. Keats uses alliteration, caesura, anaphora, and internal rhyme to develop the poem's musical elements. For example:My sleep had been...
What's Up With the Title?
An ode is a lyric poem that typically praises someone or something. It could be a famous person, a romantic interest, a shoe, or a concept like "love." Keats was a big fan of odes. He wrote quite a...
Calling Card
Keats was awfully fond of allusions, especially allusions to Greek mythology. In "Ode on Indolence,he gives a hearty shout-out to Phidias, a famous Grecian sculptor and artist. The figures that vis...
Tough-o-Meter
A reference to Greek figures and a few old-fashioned words like "besprinkle" and "throstle" might have readers reaching for the dictionary, but that's to be expected, considering that the poem was...
Trivia
Keats originally studied to become a surgeon. What's up, doc? (Source.) Keats was good friends with other famous Romantic poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Wordsworth. (Source.) Keats was born on...
Steaminess Rating
Love, dressed as a fair maid, makes only a brief appearance in the poem before flying off into the clouds… and that's about it for amore. This one is as "G" as can be.
Allusions
Luke 12:27, Matthew 6:28 (Epigraph)Phidias, Greek sculptor (10)