"Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind" (Keats 848). This quote, taken from the last stanza of John Keats' "Ode to Psyche," exemplifies the meaning of the ode for the reader. According to Andrew Motion, author of Keats: A Biography, "Keats defines his individual self while registering his dependence on surrounding conditions. His pursuit of 'beauty' and 'truth' is both a lament for lost ideals and a celebration of their transfigured continuance" (382). In this paper, I will show how Keats uses the winged Psyche to describe his longing to identify the soul through the use of mythology and sensual imagery.
             The first way that Keats describes his longing to identify the soul is through mythology. Keats introduces his reader to the goddess Psyche in the opening lines of the ode, "O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear," (Keats 847). In a footnote, Keats reveals that Psyche was a mortal who was wedded to Cupid and translated to heaven as an immortal. In Kris Steyaert's article, "Poetry as Enforcement: Conquering the Muse in Keats's 'Ode to Psyche'," he makes the statement that "the Cupid-Psyche myth may have appealed to Keats because it occasioned a candid gesture of self-definition and a search for a well-developed identity" (6). I agree with Steyeart's theory to the extent that I believe Keats uses the myth of Psyche to convey his own search for identity. In the Cupid-Psyche myth, Psyche endures many tribulations in order to be with her immortal lover. After all of this, Psyche is not even recognized as a goddess until after the time of Apuleius the Platonist, and consequently she was never worshipped or admired as she should h...