The ode's associations with unpremeditated song, the sublime, and the ‘divine’ power of the poet qualify it to be the Romantic genre par excellence. For Duff, ‘rediscovery of the poetic logic of the form constitutes one of Romanticism's major achievements’ (2009: 210). Yet the ode's high style, distancing it from popular genres such as the ballad, and its origins in public eulogy, also align it with bombastic flattery of the great. Some Romantics, Southey among them, speak of it contemptuously on occasions. Nor is there a consensus about whether the ode as it developed during the Romantic period constitutes a specifically
Romantic
ode. Some, indeed, consider that pursuit of such specification deflects attention from more appropriate taxonomies.