Roots
Words in verse
Deepti

An ode is a lyric poem that celebrates something: a person, an event or even an object. It is conventionally written in an exalted style. The word ‘ode’ comes from the Greek oide, a word that means ‘song’. The word ‘monody’ also owes its existence to oide, as it is made up of the Greek words monos meaning ‘one’ and oide. In a monody, the poet laments someone’s death. A piece of music in which a single melodic line predominates is also called ‘monody’.

Along with so many other words, the Greek oide has created the word ‘palinode’ made up of palin meaning ‘again’ and oide. A palinode is a poem in which the author retracts something said or held earlier. A famous example is Chaucer’s Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, which he wrote when accused of the slander of women lovers in poems like Troilus and Criseyde. To make amends, he portrayed women as saints in The Legend; saints in their fidelity to the creed of love.

In ancient Greece, verses specially written for the purpose were sung outside the bedchamber of newly wedded couple. The word ‘epithalamion’ harks back to this practice. It literally means ‘at the bridal chamber’, made up as it is of the words epi, meaning ‘upon’, and thalamus, meaning ‘bridal chamber’. Poets gave the label ‘epithalamion’ to poems they wrote in honour of the bride and the groom. The first such poem was written in about 1850 by Sir Philip Sydney, and later John Donne, P.B. Shelley and W.H.Auden also wrote epithalamions or epithalamiums. Another variety is the prothalamium. The difference lies in the fact that this poem can be sung for a wedding anytime in the future.

Today, one may ‘wax lyrical’ about any subject, but the original Greek ‘lyric’ was a song that was sung to the accompaniment of a lyre. For poets, a lyric is a fairly short poem, usually the utterance of a single speaker and expressing a state of mind. A famous example is Burns’ ‘O, my Love is like a Red, Red Rose’.