Oder
one of the principal rivers of posed to express the poet's feelings in the pressure of high excitement, and taking an irregular form from the emotional fervency which seeks spontaneous rhythm for its varied utterance. The Greeks then emptying into the Stettiner Haff, called every lyrical poem adapted to sing Germany, rising in the Oderberg on the tableland of Moravia, 1,950 feet above the level of the sea, traversing Prussia, Silesia, Brandenburg, and Pomerania, whence it passes into the Baltic by the ing-hence opposed to the elegiac poem triple arms of the Dievenow, Peene, and -an ode. The principal ancient writers Swine, which enclose the islands of Wolwere Pindar, Anacreon, Sappho, Alcæus, lin and Usedom. It has a course N. W. among the Greeks, and Horace among the and N. of 550 miles, and a basin of 50,000 Romans. As employed by English writ- square miles. Canals connect the Oder ers the ode takes either the Pindaric form with the Spree, the Havel, and the Elbe; of strophe, antistrophe, and epode irreg- the Warthe is the only tributary of imularly arranged and contrasted; or, the portance for navigation. On the banks form of a regular series of regular stan- of the Oder are Ratibor, Breig, Breslau,
The former style is found in Dry- Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Stettin, and den's "Ode for St. Cecelia's Day," while Swinemünde. zas. the latter is seen in Shelly's "Ode to a Skylark." The masters of English poesy who have carried the ode to its highest achievements are Milton, Dryden, Collins, Grey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley.