A Cowleyan ode is a loose English ode modeled on the grand style of Pindar but without a fixed stanza pattern or regular meter. Associated with Abraham Cowley, it typically moves in uneven sections and lets line length and rhyme shift as the poem's emotion or argument develops.
The term is now mainly historical, and it often overlaps with what older critics called a Pindaric ode.
Example
I spoke to dawn in broken lines,
then widened into praise;
my voice leapt high, fell back, and rose
again in stranger ways.
The river changed its tune each mile,
and so my stanzas changed with it.