What type of a poem is Philip Larkin's Aubade?

Question

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Answer 1

The rhyme scheme is ten lines, built from a Venus and Adonis stanza (ababcc) followed by an envelope stanza (deed); the metre is a rough, naturalistic iambic pentameter, but the ninth lines are short, roughly iambic trimeter.  I cannot think of any English poems that use this stanza.  The series of five longish parts evokes an ode; indeed, Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn is also fifty lines long, and likewise was built from five two-part, ten line stanzas, of quatrain and sestet.  It is likewise possible that there are some French imitations of Greek odes with a more similar rhyme structure; however these formal similarities are deceptive.  This poem is a unified, solid contemplation that is most similar in structure, motion, and content to to Hamlet's `to be or not to be' monologue than to the dialectical ideal of an ode.

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