An ode is a lyric poem of elevated style that addresses a particular subject with praise, meditation, or passionate reflection. It is typically more formal and sustained than a simple song.

Classical odes were public and ceremonial; the Romantic ode became a vehicle for personal meditation on nature, art, or mortality—Keats’s odes being the supreme English examples. The form may follow a strict stanzaic pattern or adopt a looser structure. What remains constant is the sense of serious address: the poet turns toward an object, a person, or an abstract quality and sustains a high level of attention and feeling.

Odes often include apostrophe—direct address to the subject—and a progression of thought that deepens or complicates the initial impulse. They can celebrate, lament, or question. The elevated diction that once defined the ode has been relaxed by modern practitioners, yet the ambition to give a subject its full lyric due persists.

A poem that turns to its subject with formal intensity and sustained reflection is an ode.