Ode: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

This article is about the poetic and musical form of ode. For ordinary differential equations (abbr. ODE), see differential equation.

From the Greek and Latin poems of the same name written for formal occasions.

Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is an example of a Horatian Ode, which contains matched stanzas as compared to, for example, Wordsworth's "Intimations on Immortality." Thomas Gray's Pindaric Odes The Progress of Poesy and The Bard are among the finest examples in the English language.

The term was adopted in English music to refer to a setting of a text with alternating choral and solo passages. Odes were usually in several movements and resembled cantatas. For example Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne by Handel.