The Ode, addressed to a person or a personified idea or else expressing the poet's emotions at a moment of great exaltation. In form it either follows a varying sequence of lines of irregular length or else employs a series of uniform stanzas. Illustrative of the former are Dryden's "Alexander's Feast" and "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," and Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality"; among the latter are Collins's "Ode to Evening," Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark," and Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo" and "Ode to Duty." The Sonnet, of Italian origin, was brought to its perfection by Petrarch; it consists of fourteen lines of equal length (in English usually of ten syllables), the first eight lines constituting the _octave_ and the last six, the _sestet_. In the octave the rhymes are arranged _a b b a a b b a_, and in the sestet, either _c d c d c d_ or _c d e c d e_. The sonnet should contain one idea, which may be treated from two points of view, in the octave and sestet respectively. As used by Milton and later poets in England this double treatment was not often observed and there is no break of thought at the end of the octave. Owing to its restrictions the sonnet is considered one of the most difficult forms in which to achieve distinction, as metrical ingenuity without sublimity of thought bars mere versifiers. The most noted examples by English authors are E. B. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese," Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," Milton's "On His Blindness," Shelley's "England in 1819," and those selected from Wordsworth. The Ballad, partaking somewhat of the epic, is a tale in verse, usually arranged in short stanzas. "Old English Ballads," Cowper's "The Diverting History of John Gilpin," Drayton's "Ballad of Agincourt," and Rossetti's "The White Ship" are specimens of this form. It originated among the peasantry, who commemorated the prowess of their favorite heroes in rough verse sung by the cottage hearth. The Elegy is devoted to the memory of the dead and therefore is grave and stately in its metrical form as well as in thought. Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" are the most famous. =Idyllic poetry= briefly presents a picture, complete and lovely, usually pastoral and romantic. Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," the Idylls of Theocritus, and the Eclogues of Vergil are the best examples.