Ode to Duty (written in 1805; published in 1807) is a poem (an

ode An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry, with its origins in Ancient Greece. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structu ...

) written by

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

Description

“Ode to Duty” is an appeal to the principle of morality for guidance and support. It represents in a measure a

recant Recantation is a public denial of a previously publishing, published opinion or belief. The word is derived from the Latin ''re cantare'' ("sing again"). It is related to repentance and revocation. Philosophy In philosophy, recantation is link ...

ation of Wordsworth's earlier faith in the spontaneous and unguided impulses of the heart, written at a time when he was coming to feel more and more the need of an invariable standard. While continuing to recognize the worth and beauty of the creed of joy and love, he feels that there must be also the mandate of the stern power which preserves the stars in their courses and lays the law of sacrifice and self-restraint upon the soul of the individual. Stern as is the voice of duty, it is yet also divinely beautiful, The mood and temper of the “Ode to Duty” is characteristic of much of Wordsworth's later work. According to Wordsworth's own statement, the “Ode to Duty” was modeled on

Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classics, classical scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College. He is widely ...

's “Hymn to Adversity,” which in turn was imitated from

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

's “Ode to Fortune.” The

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...

is identical with that used by Gray, and there are resemblances in ideas and phraseology. The ode consists of 56 lines. There are 7 stanzas of 8 lines each. It follows the rhyming scheme of ABABCCDD.

References

External links

* (multiple versions) {{William Wordsworth Poetry by William Wordsworth 1807 poems