About the Poet - Rajendra Mishra College, Saharsa (Bihar).

By P B Shelley

B.A Part 1

Nabiul Islam

R M College, Saharsa

Department of English

About the Poet:

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the

major English Romantic poets, widely regarded as one of the

finest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language. A radical in his

poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame

during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily

following his death. Shelley became a key member of a close circle of visionary

poets and writers that included Lord Byron, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas

Love Peacock and his own second wife, Mary Shelley.

Shelley is perhaps best known for classic poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to

the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Music, When Soft Voices Die", "The

Cloud" and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include a ground

breaking verse drama, The Cenci (1819), and long, visionary, philosophical

poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the

World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Prometheus Unbound (1820)

widely considered his masterpiece, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1821) and his

final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).

About the Poem:

"Ode to the West Wind" is an ode, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819

near Florence, Italy. It was originally published in 1820 by Charles in London

as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts,

With Other Poems. Perhaps more than anything else, Shelley wanted his

message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for

spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure. Some also

believe that the poem was written in response to the loss of his son, William in

1819. The ensuing pain influenced Shelley. The poem allegorises the role of the

poet as the voice of change and revolution. At the time of composing this poem,

Shelley without doubt had the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 in mind. His

other poems written at the same time—"The Masque of Anarchy", Prometheus

Unbound, and "England in 1819"—take up these same themes of political

change, revolution, and role of the poet.

Some literary forms of the poem:

Ode:

An ode is a type of lyrical stanza. It is an elaborately structured poem praising

or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as

emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe,

the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic

ode and the irregular ode also enter.

Canto:

The canto is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long

poetry. The word canto is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing",

which comes from the Latin cantus, "song", from the infinitive verb canere, "to

sing”. The use of the canto was described in the 1911 edition of

the Encyclopædia Britannica as "a convenient division when poetry was more

usually sung by the minstrel to his own accompaniment than read”. There is no

specific format, construction or style for a canto and it is not limited to any one

type of poetry.

Terza rima:

Terza rim is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-

line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The

literal translation of terza rima from Italian is "third rhyme". Terza rima is a

three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern ABA BCB CDC DED. There

is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written

in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the

middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above

are DED E, or DED EE. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but

in English, iambic pentameter is generally preferred.

Iambic pentameter:

Iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional

English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter,

established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of

syllables called "feet". "Iambic" refers to the type of foot used, here the iamb,

which in English indicates an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

(as in a-bove). "Pentameter" indicates a line of five "feet".

Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in the

major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some

of the traditionally rhymed stanza forms. It is used both in early forms of

English poetry and in later forms; William Shakespeare famously used iambic

pentameter in his plays and sonnets. As lines in iambic pentameter usually

contain ten syllables, it is considered a form of decasyllabic verse

Alliteration:

In literature, alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of identical initial

consonant sounds in successive or closely associated syllables within a group of

words, even those spelled differently. As a method of linking words for effect,

alliteration is also called head rhyme or initial rhyme. For example,

"humble house “or” potential power play”.A familiar example

is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically

in various languages around the world, including Irish, German, Mongolian,

Hungarian, American Sign Language, Somali, Finnish, and Icelandic.

Text of the poem:

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Ode to the West Wind Summary:

The speaker of the poem appeals to the West Wind to infuse him with a new

spirit and a new power to spread his ideas. In order to invoke the West Wind, he

lists a series of things the wind has done that illustrate its power: driving away

the autumn leaves, placing seeds in the earth, bringing thunderstorms and the

cyclical "death" of the natural world, and stirring up the seas and oceans.

The speaker wishes that the wind could affect him the way it does leaves and

clouds and waves. Because it can’t, he asks the wind to play him like an

instrument, bringing out his sadness in its own musical lament. Maybe the wind

can even help him to send his ideas all over the world; even if they’re not

powerful in their own right, his ideas might inspire others. The sad music that

the wind will play on him will become a prophecy. The West Wind of autumn

brings on a cold, barren period of winter, but isn’t winter always followed by a

spring?

Canto I: I, the West Wind

Lines 1-5

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes:

o The speaker appeals to the West Wind four times in this first canto,

or section, of the poem. (We don’t find out what he’s actually

asking the wind to do for him until the end of the canto.)

o Lines 1-5 are the first appeal, in which the speaker describes the

West Wind as the breath of Autumn.

o Like a magician banishing ghosts or evil spirits, the West Wind

sweeps away the dead leaves. These dead leaves are multi-

coloured, but not beautiful in the way we usually think of autumn

leaves – their colors are weird and ominous and seem almost

diseased (like "pestilence-stricken multitudes").

Lines 5-8

O Thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

o The speaker appeals to the West Wind a second time.

o

o This time, the West Wind is described as carrying seeds to their

grave-like places in the ground, where they’ll stay until the spring

wind comes and revives them. The wind burying seeds in the

ground is like a charioteer driving corpses to their graves.

Lines 8-12

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

o Once the West Wind has carried the seeds into the ground, they lie

there all winter, and then are woken by the spring wind.

o Shelley thinks of the spring wind as blue (or, to be specific,

"azure").

o The spring wind seems to be the cause of all the regeneration and

flowering that takes place in that season. It blows a "clarion" (a

kind of trumpet) and causes all the seeds to bloom. It fills both

"plain and hill" with "living hues and odours." It also opens buds

into flowers the way a shepherd drives sheep.

Lines 13-14

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

o The speaker appeals to the West Wind twice more, describing it as

a "Wild Spirit" that’s everywhere at once.

o The West Wind is both "Destroyer and Preserver"; it brings the

death of winter, but also makes possible the regeneration of spring.

o

o Now we find out (sort of) what the speaker wants the wind to do:

"hear, oh, hear!" For the moment, that’s all he’s asking – just to be

listened to. By the wind.

Canto II: I, the West Wind

Lines 15-18

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

o The speaker continues to describe the West Wind.

o This time, he describes the wind as having clouds spread through it

the way dead leaves float in a stream. Leaves fall from the

branches of trees, and these clouds fall from the "branches" of the

sky and the sea, which work together like "angels of rain and

lightning" to create clouds and weather systems.

o Yep, there’s a storm coming!

Lines 18-23

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm.

o The speaker creates a complex simile describing the storm that the

West Wind is bringing. The "locks of the approaching storm" – the

thunderclouds that is – are spread through the airy "blue surface" of

the West Wind in the same way that the wild locks of hair on a

Mænad wave around in the air. Got that?

o

o Let’s put it in SAT analogy form: thunderclouds are to the West

Wind as a Mænad’s locks of hair are to the air.

o A Mænad is one of the wild, savage women who hang out with the

god Dionysus in Greek mythology. The point here about Mænads

is that, being wild and crazy, they don’t brush their hair much.

o Oh, and the poet reminds us that these Mænad-hair-like clouds go

vertically all the way through the sky, from the horizon to the

center.

Lines 23-28

Thou Dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

o The speaker develops a morbid metaphor to describe the power of

the West Wind. The wind is described as a "dirge," or funeral song,

to mark the death of the old year. The night that’s falling as the

storm comes is going to be like a dark-domed tomb constructed of

thunderclouds, lightning, and rain.

o The poet ends by asking the West Wind once again to "hear" him,

but we don’t know yet what exactly he wants it to listen to.

Canto III: I, the West Wind, the Mediterranean Sea

Lines 29-32

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

o The speaker tells us more about the West Wind’s wacky exploits:

the Mediterranean Sea has lain calm and still during the summer,

almost as though on vacation "beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,"

a holiday spot for the ancient Romans. But the West Wind has

woken the Mediterranean, presumably by stirring him up and

making the sea choppy and storm-tossed.

o The Mediterranean is personified here as male.

Lines 33-36

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!

o During his summertime drowsiness, the Mediterranean has seen in

his dreams the "old palaces and towers" along Baiæ’s bay, places

that are now overgrown with plants so that they have become

heartbreakingly picturesque.

Lines 36-38

Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

o The speaker claims that the "level" Atlantic Ocean breaks itself

into "chasms" for the West Wind.

o This is a poetic way of saying the wind disturbs the water, making

waves, but it also suggests that the ocean is subservient to the West

Wind’s amazing powers.

Lines 38-42

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

o In the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, the different kinds of marine

plants hear the West Wind high above and "suddenly grow gray

with fear" and thrash around, harming themselves in the process.

o

o Once again, the speaker ends all these descriptions of the West

Wind by asking it to "hear" him.

Canto IV: I, the West Wind

Lines 43-47

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O Uncontrollable!

o The speaker begins to describe his own desires more clearly. He

wishes he were a "dead leaf" or a "swift cloud" that the West Wind

could carry, or a wave that would feel its "power" and "strength."

o He imagines this would make him almost as free as the

"uncontrollable" West Wind itself.

Lines 47-51

If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision;

o The speaker is willing to compromise: even if he can’t be a leaf or

a cloud, he wishes he could at least have the same relationship to

the wind that he had when he was young, when the two were

"comrade[s]."

o When he was young, the speaker felt like it was possible for him to

be faster and more powerful than the West Wind.

Lines 51-53

I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

o The speaker claims that, if he could have been a leaf or cloud on

the West Wind, or felt young and powerful again, he wouldn’t be

appealing to the West Wind now for its help.

o

o He begs the wind to treat him the way it does natural objects like

waves, leaves and clouds.

Lines 54-56

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

o The speaker exclaims, "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"

o He explains that the passage of time has weighed him down and

bowed (but not yet broken) his spirit, which started out "tameless,

and swift, and proud," just like the West Wind itself.

Canto V: I, the West Wind

Lines 57-58

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

o Finally, the speaker asks the West Wind for something: he wants

the wind to turn him into its lyre.

o This image is related to the æolian harp, a common metaphor in

Romantic poetry. The æolian harp is sort of like a stringed version

of a wind chime; it’s an instrument that you only have to put out in

the breeze and nature will play its own tunes.

o Here Shelley’s speaker describes himself as the harp, or "lyre," that

the wind will play. He’ll be the instrument, and the West Wind will

play its own music on him, just as it does in the branches of trees in

the forest. That way, it won’t matter that he’s metaphorically losing

his leaves.

Lines 59-61

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness.

o The speaker and the trees of the forest are both decaying – the trees

are losing their leaves, and he’s been bowed down by life.

o

o But that doesn’t matter; if the wind plays both of them as

instruments, they’ll make sweet, melancholy, autumn-ish music.

Lines 61-62

Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

o Now the speaker changes tactics; instead of asking the wind to play

him like an instrument, he asks the wind to become him. He wants

the wind’s "fierce" spirit to unite with him entirely, or maybe even

replace his own spirit.

Lines 63-64

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth!

o The speaker compares his thoughts to the dead leaves; perhaps the

West Wind can drive his thoughts all over the world in the same

way it moves the leaves, and they’ll become like a rich compost or

mulch from which new growth can come in the spring. That way,

even if his thoughts are garbage, at least that garbage can fertilizes

something better.

Lines 65-67

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

o The speaker comes up with another metaphor to describe what he

wants the wind to do to his thoughts, and this one isn’t about

fertilizer. He describes his own words – perhaps the words of this

very poem – as sparks and ashes that the wind will blow out into

the world.

o The speaker himself is the "unextinguished hearth" from which the

sparks fly; he’s a fire that hasn’t gone out yet, but is definitely

waning.

Lines 68-69

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy!

The speaker returns to the metaphor of the wind playing him as an

instrument, but this time he describes his mouth as a trumpet

through which the wind will blow its own prophecy.

Lines 69-70

O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

o The speaker ends by asking the wind a question that seems very

simple: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

o The symbolic weight that he’s attached to the seasons, however,

makes us realize that this is more than a question about the wheel

of the year. He’s asking whether or not the death and decay that

come at the end of something always mean that a rebirth is around

the corner.

o He’s hoping that’s true, because he can feel himself decaying

Ode to the West Wind Analysis

Sound Check

This poem is only a hair’s breadth different from a prayer. If you imagine

the speaker on his knees in front of the wind, trying to grab the hem of its

jacket (not that the wind wears a jacket) and begging it to help him, you’ll

get pretty close to the tone and sound of "Ode to the West Wind." "O wild

West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being" (1), the speaker implores,

"you who do this and you who do that, you did this great thing and that

great thing, so please help me!" But it’s a grand, rolling, melodic sort of

begging, which is why it reminds us of a prayer. Using the formal and

old-fashioned "thou" and plenty of alliteration, the speaker proclaims his

request with dignity. It’s a wonderful contradiction: he’s pleading, but

proudly, to "thou, O Uncontrollable!" (46). He knows that his prayer is

unlikely to have any effect, but he’s going to make it sound as good as

possible while he’s speaking.

What's Up With the Title?

The most important thing about the "Ode to the West Wind" is, of course,

that it’s an ode. An ode is a lyric poem that has a complicated formal

structure, a highfalutin’ tone and a grand philosophical subject. If you

read a short lyric poem and come away feeling a little patronized, chances

that it’s an ode. Odes are an ancient form of poetry that first appeared in

classical Greek; they were extremely popular among the Romantic poets.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley all wrote odes that are still

among the most famous poems in the English language.

There are many different ways to classify the types of odes, which we

won’t get into here, because they’re not that useful unless you plan to

study odes for the rest of your life. The point is that, by titling the poem

"Ode to the West Wind," Shelley is signalling to us as readers that he’s

going to pull out all the stops. We know that we’ll need to look closely at

the rhyme scheme, the rhythm, the stanza groupings, and all the little

details of arrangement. We know that this is going to be a

very serious poem. And we know that it’s going to deal with some of the

Big Issues in life, art, and philosophy. Basically, calling the poem an

"Ode" is like putting "Black Tie Only" on a wedding invitation – things

are going to be formal perhaps even to the point of awkwardness.

Another feature of odes is that they tend to have two major shifts in tone,

because they’re often divided into three general sections. (The sections

are called the "strophe," "antistrophe," and "epode," but you probably

don’t need to remember that.) The first section establishes one point; the

second section establishes a contrary point, and the end of the poem

brings them both together. Not every ode fits this pattern perfectly, but it

works pretty well for "Ode to the West Wind," which shifts from second-

person to first-person at the beginning of Canto IV and then moves on to

consider the West Wind and speaker together in Canto V.

Oh, and what about the "West Wind" part of the title? Well, by writing an

ode to a force of Nature, Shelley hints that he’s going to be considering

the power of the natural world. We might even guess that he’s going to

contrast what the natural world can do with what the poet can do. Why

the West Wind? Well, think about what’s to the west of Europe in the

nineteenth century (the answer is, of course, America) and what it might

symbolize (revolution, freedom, new ideas, etc.).

Setting

We’re tempted to claim that the setting in this poem is "The Universe,"

and that wouldn’t be far wrong. While there are several geographical

references here – the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and Baiæ’s

Bay – it’s telling that all of them are to flowing bodies of water instead of

urban centers, modern nations, or anything grounded. Shelley’s poem,

like the West Wind that it describes, has the power to move freely over

the world, ascending up to "the zenith’s height" (22) or plunging down

into "The sea-blooms and the oozy woods" (39) that are "far below" (38)

at the bottom of the ocean.

More than anything else, Shelley sets this poem in the human mind. Even

though the speaker claims that his thoughts are "like withered leaves"

(64), we learn that he is "tameless, and swift, and proud" (56) like Nature

itself. In fact, by juxtaposing the wild West Wind blowing over the entire

Earth with the desire of the speaker to scatter his thoughts, Shelley tries to

fuse the mind of Man and the infinite range of Nature. So that’s where we

are: everywhere. We’re trying to fit "everywhere" into your mind, so that

we can change both of them.

Speaker

The speaker in this poem is almost, but not quite, a fully-fledged

character; he’s somewhere between the shadowy impersonal speaker that

we assume is between the poet and the poem every time we read poetry

and find an actual character who interacts with other characters in the

poem. Even before the speaker starts talking about himself by saying, "I

this" and "I that," we know that there is a speaker here. Not only does

every poem have a speaker, but this speaker is addressing the West Wind,

calling it "thou" and invoking its aid. That must mean there’s someone

doing the invoking, someone talking to the "thou" – an "I." In fact, we

could make that a rule: for every "thou," there’s an "I" lurking

somewhere.

We know that this speaker is concerned about sending his ideas out into

the world for other people to experience. He knows, or thinks, that his

ideas aren’t any good; in fact, he describes them as "dead" and

"withered." But he still wants to get them out there, because they might

provide an opportunity for other people to develop their own ideas. He

feels incapable of doing this on his own because of something that has

happened to him. It might be some specific traumatic thing, but it might

just be the general pain of living. He only refers to it as "the thorns of

life" (54).

We also suspect the speaker might be a writer or even a poet, because he

likes to pun on the word "leaves," which could be things that fall off trees

but could also be pages of books. He also refers directly to the poem itself

within the poem: "by the incantation of this verse / Scatter...my words

among mankind!" (65-6, 67). So it’s not just Shelley writing a poem

about this speaker – the speaker himself knows about and is composing

the poem.

Tough-O-Meter

(5) Tree Line

This poem is right in the middle of the range. It doesn’t have too many

complicated references to things the poet thinks you should have read but

you haven’t. But it does have metaphors that remind us of the analogy

section on the SATs. It has a straightforward cast of characters – just two,

the speaker and the West Wind that he’s talking to. But it also has

sentences that are more twisted than a corkscrew. Take it slow, rearrange

the phrases in each sentence to work out what Shelley’s saying, and

you’ll be fine. You’ll be reading Prometheus Unbound, Shelley’s

unperformable play about imagination, before you know it.

.

Form and Meter

Ode, terza rima, and more

The most important form here is the ode. We talked about that in the

"What’s up with the Title?" section, so you can go and read about it there.

Let’s think about the rhyme scheme and meter in this poem. A lot of,

ahem, other study sites will tell you that "Ode to the West Wind" is

written in terza rima and leave it at that. That’s true, but terza rima is just

one of the traditional poetic forms that Shelley is playing with here. Let’s

cover both of them. Ready?

First, there’s terza rima, or "third rhyme," an Italian rhyme scheme most

famously used by Dante in The Divine Comedy. Shelley’s grabbing some

extra poetic street cred by using a form associated with a great Italian

poet who came before him.

The idea with terza rima is that the lines are in groups of three, and the

middle rhyme of one set of three becomes the outside rhyme of the next

set. Handbooks of literary terms will tell you that this means the rhyme

scheme is "ABA, BCB, CDC" and so on. We prefer to think of it in a

sandwich metaphor: the filling of each "sandwich" (or stanza) becomes

the bread of the next one. Of course, it’s hard to end this form, because

every set of three lines has a new middle that demands another set of

three lines to use its rhyme. Shelley fixes this problem by following each

set of four three-line stanzas with a couplet.

As if using terza rima weren’t enough to make "Ode to the West Wind"

remind us of Dante, Shelley also divides the poem into cantos, the Italian

poetry equivalent of chapters.

In this poem, Shelley also plays with another form: the sonnet. "Wait a

minute," we hear you saying. "This doesn’t look like a sonnet. For one

thing, a sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter." Not too

fast: "Ode to the West Wind" has five cantos, each of which is fourteen

lines and ends in a couplet. That sounds suspiciously like an English

sonnet. (Italian sonnets often don’t end in couplets.) And even though

there’s a lot of variation in the number of syllables in each line, one could

maybe generally call this iambic pentameter. Think about lines seven and

eight: "The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, /

Each like a corpse within its grave, until" – hear that? Some iambic

pentameter is peeking through here. So "Ode to the West Wind" is almost

like a miniature sonnet sequence of five sonnets.

.

Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you

travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic

terminology ahead.

The West Wind

The West Wind is the object of the speaker’s plea in this poem, the

powerful force that could deliver him from his inability to make himself

heard or to communicate his ideas to others. Blowing from the west

suggests an association with the revolutionary, liberating aspects of the

young United States, or perhaps simply a favourable wind for ships

returning home to ports in Europe. Associated with autumn, the West

Wind brings with it decay and the certainty of a wintry death, but it also

makes a spring rebirth possible by clearing away the old dead leaves and

planting seeds.

o Line 1: The West Wind is the object of an apostrophe at the

beginning of this line. This is the first time, and by no means the

last, that the speaker will apostrophize the wind. In fact, you could

say that this whole poem is one long apostrophe. You might also

notice the excessive alliteration in this line: "O wild West Wind" is

a bit over the top.

o Lines 5-7: The West Wind is personified here as the charioteer of

the "winged seeds" that it carries to their dormant rest in the earth

during the winter. Shelley will continue to personify the wind

throughout the poem, although it never becomes a fully-developed

character.

o Line 14: The West Wind is described as "Destroyer and Preserver,"

which some scholars think is an allusion to the Hindu gods Siva

and Vishnu. Line 14 also introduces the refrain of "Ode to the West

Wind," "O hear!” which appears at the end of the first three cantos.

o

o Lines 18-23: The West Wind becomes part of a complex simile in

these lines: the storm clouds spread across the "blue surface" of the

wind are like a Mænad’s locks of hair. We know this is a simile

and not a metaphor because the word "Like" appears at the

beginning of line 20.

Dead Leaves

Dead leaves are referenced no less than five times in this short lyric

poem. Dead leaves are the remnants of the previous season which the

wind clears away; they’re also a metaphorical representation of the pages

of writing and poetry generated by the speaker, or perhaps even the

author. Once ideas are put down on paper, they’re printed on the "leaves"

of a book. At that point, they seem to be declining.

o Lines 2-5: The dead leaves are part of a complicated simile in these

lines: dead leaves blown away by the wind are like ghosts running

away from an enchanter. When Shelley lists the colors of the

leaves as "Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red," we detect

an allusion to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s Death, of

course, who rides the pale horse.

o Line 16: Here we learn that the clouds are "like Earth’s decaying

leaves." In the previous simile, the leaves were the main focus and

the simile created an image that told us more about them; here, the

clouds are the main focus and the leaves are used as an image that

tells us more about them.

o Lines 64-66: The speaker compares his thoughts in a simile to

"withered leaves," which is a pun on the two meanings of "leaves"

– things that drop off trees, but also the pages of a book. Since the

speaker himself is a poet who describes his plea to the West Wind

as "the incantation of this verse" (65), the pun is even more

obvious. However, because this is a very formal poem with

heightened diction, we’d prefer to call this a "play on words"

instead of a pun.

Funerals

Although there aren’t any literal funerals in "Ode to the West Wind,"

there’s plenty of funereal imagery and symbolism. We’ve got dirges,

corpses, the "dying year," a sepulchre, and ashes, just to name a few. Of

course, they don’t all come at once – they’re spread throughout the poem

as parts of different metaphors and trains of images. Taken all together,

though, they make us feel like this poem is a kind of elegy (or lament)

just as much as it’s an ode.

o Lines 5-12: In an extended simile, Shelley compares seeds to

corpses lying in their graves. This is also an allusion to the

Christian imagery of the Apocalypse, in which a "Last Trumpet" is

blown (here, the Spring blows a "clarion," which is a kind of

trumpet) in order to resurrect the bodies of the dead (here, the

corpses of the seeds, which will come to life in the spring).

o Lines 23-28: This extended metaphor compares the West Wind to a

dirge, the dying year to the dead man in a funeral, and the night sky

to the dome of a sepulchre. Toward the end of the metaphor,

Shelley’s imagery breaks away from the strict correspondences of

the metaphor, and both the wind and the inside of the sepulchre

become stormy. It’s almost as though, when the storm breaks,

when "Black rain and fire and hail will burst," the metaphor is

broken down from inside.

o

o Lines 65-67: The poem becomes a spell, or "incantation," by which

the poet hopes to make the West Wind scatter his words, which are

metaphorically described as "[a]shes and sparks." Some of the

words have the power to light new metaphorical "fires" under other

poets and thinkers, while others are already "dead."

The Æolian Harp

The æolian harp was a common parlor instrument in the nineteenth

century. Sort of like a wind chime, the æolian harp (or "æolian lyre" or

"wind harp") was meant to be left in a windy spot, perhaps a window, so

that the wind could play its own natural tunes on the instrument. For

Romantic poets like Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, the

æolian harp came to represent the way that the individual poet could turn

himself into an instrument that expressed something more universal about

the natural world. In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley’s speaker begs the

West Wind to treat him as its lyre or trumpet or other instrument.

o Lines 57-58: The speaker apostrophizes the West Wind, asking it

to make him into a lyre. He actually wants to be turned into a

passive instrument or object.

o Lines 59-61: Describing the "music" that the West Wind will draw

from him as its instrument, the speaker characterizes its

"harmonies" as in "tumult," a powerful paradox.

Bodies of Water

Although "Ode to the West Wind" is mostly about, well, the wind, the

middle of the poem moves away from the airy breezes and considers a

different element: water. This slippage starts to happen in Canto II, where

the wind is described as having a "stream" (15) and a "blue surface" (19),

which makes it sound like a body of water. We’re also reminded that the

clouds being carried by the wind came originally from the water that

evaporated from the ocean and that they’ll rain back down into it. In the

next canto, we learn how the wind wakes the Mediterranean Sea from his

"summer dreams" (29) and chops up the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The water almost washes away the wind for a moment there – but the

poem reminds us that the West Wind is always stronger than the calm,

passive seas.

o Lines 15-17: These lines combine intense imagery of the natural

world with a complex extended metaphor. In the metaphor,

"decaying leaves" falling from "tangled boughs" onto the earth are

compared to the clouds that come from "Heaven and Ocean." In

other words, the combination of Heaven, the sky with the sun in it,

and Ocean, causes water to evaporate into the sky and form clouds.

These clouds then float on the "stream" of the West Wind the way

dead leaves float in a real stream.

o Line 28: Here the water that has evaporated from the ocean rains

back down. To emphasize the violence and power of the storm,

Shelley uses ten one-syllable words in this line, creating a strong,

harsh sound as is read aloud.

o Lines 29-30: The Mediterranean Sea is personified here as a

dreaming man, whom the wind can "waken" from "his summer

dreams" (29).

o

o Lines 37-41: In three of these lines, the verb is placed at the end of

the line. This creates an enjambment that drives the reader from

one line to the next; this is rather like what’s actually happening at

this point in the poem: the Atlantic is splitting itself into "chasms"

for the West Wind.

o Sex Rating

Unless you can turn the words "Make me thy lyre" into some kind

of weird sexual innuendo, this is a totally sexless poem. There

might be something sort of like sexual desire in the speaker’s wish

that he could totally fuse himself with the West Wind, but it’s an

ethereal head-in-the-clouds kind of fusion, not a hot, steamy,

physical one.

Mythological References

Hindu gods Siva and Vishnu ("Destroyer and Preserver")

the Mænads

Geographical References

the Mediterranean Sea

Baiæ’s Bay

Ode to the West Wind Themes

Man and the Natural World

In "Ode to the West Wind," Nature is grander and more powerful than

man can hope to be. The natural world is especially powerful because it

contains elements like the West Wind and the Spring Wind, which can

travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every cloud, leaf, and wave as

they go. Man may be able to increase his status by allowing Nature to

channel itself through him. In Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind,"

Nature’s power is greater than man’s because the natural world is cyclical

and always capable of a rebirth with the turning of the seasons, but

human beings seem to just flower and fade.

Transformation

As the speaker of "Ode to the West Wind" feels himself waning and

decaying, he begs the wind to use him as an instrument, inhabit him,

distribute his ideas, or prophesy through his mouth. He hopes to

transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larger "Spirit" of the

West Wind and of Nature itself.

Mortality

The West Wind in Shelley’s ode is depicted as an autumnal wind,

preparing the world for winter. As a result, the poem is filled with images

of death and decay, reminders of both natural and human mortality. The

speaker hopes that the death of one world will be inevitably followed by a

new rebirth and a new spring, but the poem leaves this rebirth uncertain.

Language and Communication

At the end of "Ode to the West Wind," the speaker betrays his deepest

concern: the fate of his ideas. He hopes that his words and thoughts will

be spread throughout the world. He’s not sure of the quality of his

thinking, but at least it can provide a starting point for other thinkers.