by John Keats
 
I
  
   
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist  
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;  
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d  
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;  
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,   5
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be  
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl  
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;  
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,  
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10
   
 
  
II
  
   
But when the melancholy fit shall fall  
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,  
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,  
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;  
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 15
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,  
Or on the wealth of globéd peonies;  
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,  
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,  
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 20
   
   
III
  

 
She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;  
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips  
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,  
Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips:  
Ay, in the very temple of delight 25
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,  
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue  
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;  
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,  
And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 30
 
 

Ode on Melancholy — Written in May of 1819, this is the shortest of Keats’s major odes. Melancholy is one of the four humours, one of the character types traditionally defined since ancient times. The humours were especially important to Elizabethans such as Shakespeare, but even though medical science had moved on in many ways, Keats’s medical training certainly meant he was familiar with them. He had also read Richard Burton’s classic 1621 text, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Equally important, Keats was a devoted student of Shakespeare’s works, and Shakespeare uses the theories of humours throughout his plays. For example, each of his four major tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello) is devoted to a character who embodies the traits of one of the humours. For more information on humours, see this chart.

Melancholy people in particular are thoughtful and introspective by nature, but if their humours become too imbalanced, they can become depressive, self-loathing, even suicidal. They think too much. Hamlet is the archetype of this kind of character. The person Keats addresses in this poem should thus be thought of as exemplifying these characteristics.
 
Lethe — the river of forgetfulness one must cross to enter Hades, the realm of the dead in Hellenic mythology
 
Wolf’s-bane (or wolfsbane) — a poisonous plant with yellow flowers
 
nightshade — a low, branching weed with small white flowers and poisonous, dark red (nearly black, thus the name) berries
 
Proserpine — the Roman name for Persephone, in Greek mythology the daughter of Demeter (Ceres to the Romans) and Zeus (Jupiter), who was carried off to the underworld by Hades (Pluto) and then had to spend six months there every year, thus causing the seasons
 
yew — a poisonous evergreen tree or shrub
 
beetle — The beetle has been associated with death since at least the ancient Egyptians, who made scarabs.
 
death-moth — more frequently called the death’s-head moth, which has a skull-like pattern on its thorax
 
Psyche — from Greek mythology; Psyche was a princess who became the lover of Eros (Cupid) and became the personification of the spirit or soul; root of words such as “psychology.”  Another of Keats’s “Great Odes” is “Ode to Psyche.”
 
Emprison — Imprison
 
She — The antecedent for this pronoun is Melancholy (not mistress).
 
sovran — sovereign