Flying Fish (an excerpt) by Charles Wharton Stork

How must it be to swim among your kind,  

Dull with the cold and dreary with the dark,  

Enclosed above, beneath, before, behind  

In green uncertainty, from which a shark 

At any time may dash  

And doom you like some huge demonic fate  

With lust insatiate?—  

He cuts the water with a seething gash;—  

What use to dart aside?  

Those great jaws, grinning wide,  

Will close your frolic as the long teeth clash. 

But I forget your gift; the bonds that hold  

The others of your race are loosed for you,  

For you alone. 

The silver dolphin bold  

Shoots like a spray-haired comet from the blue,  

But may not poise or flit  

As you do—. 

What if but a minute’s space?  

Hardly a longer grace  

Has poet, saint or lover. 

Nor a whit  

Less sure to sink are we;  

Our wings of ecstasy  

No loftier, no longer joy permit.  

Yet joy it is! to scorn the dread of death,  

To dwell for shining moments in the sun  

Of Beauty and sweet 

Love, to drink one breath  

Of a diviner element—though but one;  

To reach a higher state  

Of being, to explore a new domain;  

To leap, and leap again,  

Unheeding the gray menace of our fate  

That follows till we fall:  

For—fishes, men and all—  

The grim old Shark will have us, soon or late.

The poem above is an example of an ode. The poet wrote the poem to describe a flying fish, but ended up sending a greater message about what man can learn from such a fish.

An ode is a type of lyric poem. It is often serious, although some poets, such as Pablo Neruda, often wrote sarcastic odes.

In Ancient times, odes were typically written as songs. However, later poets simply focused on weaving a beautiful song with words.

Many odes are written in an elevated style, which means they use flowery language and often feel a bit more rigid in their rhythm and rhyme. However, there is not a set length, meter, or rhyme scheme for an ode. Instead, the structure of the ode comes from the ideas it contains.

A typical ode has three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode.

The strophe introduces the subject of the poem and the speaker's feelings on the subject.

The antistrophe represents a "turning back" or part of the poem which reconsiders or adds a new idea to the idea introduced in the strophe.

The epode is the final part of the poem which brings it all to a close or conveys the lesson the speaker wants the reader to learn.

To learn more about odes, read the odes and answer the questions on the worksheet below.