Ode to Maia

Ode to Maia
               by John Keats


Ode to Maia is one of Keats' those unfinished odes in which he was exploring the possibilities of the verse form. Though the poem Ode to Maia remains a fragment, it is considered as Keats' significant attempt.
The initial literary impulse for the poem Ode to Maia may have come from Bernabe Barne's Ode, "Lovely Maya," but here, Keats writes not like an Elizabethan or like his earliest self.
Ode to Maia is content with the quiet primrose and the simple worship of a day.


Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
     May I sing to thee
As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae?
     Or may I woe thee
In earlier Solician? or thy smiles                                  5
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan?
O, give me their old vigour, and unheard
Save of the quiet primrose, and the span.                    10
     Of heaven, and few ears,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away
     Content as theirs,
Rich in the simple worship of a day.