Congreve said in his Discourse: "The following ode is an attempt towards restoring the regularity of the ancient lyric poetry, which seems to be altogether forgotten, or unknown, by our English writers. There is nothing more frequent among us than a sort of poems entitled Pindaric Odes, pretending to be written in imitation of the manner and style of Pindar, and yet I do not know that there is to this day extant, in our language, one ode contrived after his model.... The character of these late Pindarics is a bundle of rambling incoherent thoughts, expressed in a like parcel of irregular stanzas, which also consist of such another complication of disproportioned, uncertain, and perplexed verses and rhymes.... On the contrary, there is nothing more regular than the odes of Pindar, both as to the exact observation of the measures and numbers of his stanzas and verses, and the perpetual coherence of his thoughts....
"Though there be no necessity that our triumphal odes should consist of the three afore-mentioned stanzas, yet if the reader can observe that the great variation of the numbers in the third stanza (call it epode, or what you please) has a pleasing effect in the ode, and makes him return to the first and second stanzas with more appetite than he could do if always cloyed with the same quantities and measures, I cannot see why some use may not be made of Pindar's example, to the great improvement of the English ode. There is certainly a pleasure in beholding anything that has art and difficulty in the contrivance, especially if it appears so carefully executed that the difficulty does not show itself till it is sought for....
"Having mentioned Mr. Cowley, it may very well be expected that something should be said of him, at a time when the imitation of Pindar is the theme of our discourse. But there is that great deference due to the memory, great parts, and learning, of that gentleman, that I think nothing should be objected to the latitude he has taken in his Pindaric odes. The beauty of his verses is an atonement for the irregularity of his stanzas.... Yet I must beg leave to add that I believe those irregular odes of Mr. Cowley may have been the principal, though innocent, occasion of so many deformed poems since, which, instead of being true pictures of Pindar, have (to use the Italian painters' term) been only caricatures of him."
(Discourse on the Pindaric Ode, in Chalmers's English Poets, vol. x. p. 300.)
Who shall awake the Spartan fife,
And call in solemn sounds to life
The youths whose locks divinely spreading,
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue,
At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding,
Applauding Freedom lov'd of old to view?
What new Alcæus, fancy-blest,
Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest,
At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing
(What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?),
Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,
It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound?
O goddess, in that feeling hour,
When most its sounds would court thy ears,
Let not my shell's misguided power
E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears.
No, Freedom, no, I will not tell
How Rome before thy weeping face,
With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell,
Push'd by a wild and artless race
From off its wide ambitious base,
When Time his Northern sons of spoil awoke,
And all the blended work of strength and grace,
With many a rude repeated stroke,
And many a barb'rous yell, to thousand fragments broke....
Beyond the measure vast of thought,
The works the wizard Time has wrought!
The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story,
Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand;
No sea between, nor cliff sublime and hoary,
He pass'd with unwet feet thro' all our land.
To the blown Baltic then, they say,
The wild waves found another way,
Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains rounding;
Till all the banded West at once 'gan rise,
A wide wild storm ev'n Nature's self confounding,
With'ring her giant sons with strange uncouth surprise.
This pillar'd earth so firm and wide,
By winds and inward labors torn,
In thunders dread was push'd aside,
And down the should'ring billows borne.
And see, like gems, her laughing train,
The little isles on every side!
Mona, once hid from those who search the main,
Where thousand elfin shapes abide,
And Wight, who checks the west'ring tide;
For thee consenting Heaven has each bestowed,
A fair attendant on her sovereign pride.
To thee this blest divorce she ow'd,
For thou hast made her vales thy lov'd, thy last abode!
(Collins: Ode to Liberty, strophe and antistrophe. 1746.)
This ode consists of strophe, epode, antistrophe, and second epode. The antistrophe corresponds metrically to the strophe, as usual; the epodes are in four-stress couplets. It was Collins's habit to place the epode between the strophe and antistrophe, perhaps, as Professor Bronson suggests, in order that it may produce "an impression of its own analogous to that of the Greek epode, namely, an impression of relief and repose." Mr. Bronson says further of Collins's odes: "Collins was less scholarly than Gray, but he was bolder and more original; and consciously or unconsciously he so constructed his odes that their organic parts stand out clearly distinct and produce effects analogous to those produced by the Greek ode. In brief, his method was, first, to make large divisions of the thought correspond to the large divisions of the form; and, second, to throw out into relief the complex strophe and antistrophe by contrasting them with a simple epode. The reader may not perceive the minute correspondences in form between strophe and antistrophe, but he can hardly fail to feel that the two answer to one another in a general way." (Athenæum Press edition of Collins, Introduction, p. lxxv.)
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