Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Poem, Summary & Analysis)

 

Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

(The Poem, Summary & Analysis)

 

Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Broadridge Heath, near Horsham, West Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. Shelley’s early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride. At age six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. He was a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem. Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.

Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.

Ode to the West Wind

(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?

Summary

Ode to the west wind is a poem that shows us the power of the wind which brings a change in the natural world. Similarly, the poet wishes for reform in society. The poem also has themes of optimism and hope for a better future.

The poet says, that “wild West Wind” of autumn scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring. He asks the wind, a “destroyer and preserver,” to hear him. The speaker calls the wind the “dirge / Of the dying year,” and again implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind “didst waken” the Mediterranean from “his summer dreams,” and cleaves the Atlantic into chasms, making the “sapless foliage” of the ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him.

The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, “the comrade” of the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its powers. He prays the wind to lift him “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”. The poet wants to be like the wind “tameless, and swift, and proud”. He is now” chain’d and bow'd” with the weight of his hours upon the earth.

The poet asks the wind to make him its lyre, to be his own Spirit, and “like withered leaves” drive his thoughts across the universe, “to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.” the poet says, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Analysis

Each of the seven parts of “Ode to the West Wind” contains five stanzas—four three-line stanzas and a two-line couplet, all metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each part is, ABA BCB CDC DED EE.

Shelley invokes the wind, describing its power and its role as both “destroyer and preserver,” and asks the wind to lift him out of his inactivity, “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” The poet asks the wind to drive his “dead thoughts” like “withered leaves” over the universe, to “quicken a new birth”—that is, to quicken the coming of the “spring” of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality. He asks the wind to be his spirit.

Shelley has used the themes of death, rebirth, and poetry in ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ From the very start of the poem, Shelley describes the wind as something powerful and destructive. It takes away the summer and brings winter. It’s not a peaceful wind, despite this, the poet celebrates it. He says, that without death, there is no rebirth.

Shelley uses several literary devices in the poem, like, alliteration, personification, and apostrophe (something or someone that either can’t hear or can’t respond).

In the opening stanza, the use of capital letters for “West” and “Wind” suggests, that the poet is speaking to the Wind, as though it were a person. When he calls the wind the “breath of Autumn’s being”, he further personifies the wind and gives it the human quality of having breath. He says, that the wind has “unseen presence” which means, that he views the wind as a sort of god or spiritual being. This spiritual being drives away death and ghosts.

In Ode to the West Wind, the dead Autumn leaves are not described as colorful and beautiful, but as a symbol of death and disease. They have the deathly colors “yellow” “black” and “pale”. These dead and dying leaves are “Pestilence stricken multitudes”. The poet seems to see the fall leaves as a symbol of the dead, the sick, and the dying. The dark wintry bed is a symbol of a grave.

According to the poet, each leaf is “a corpse within its grave”. The use of the word “azure” or blue, to describe the wind is in sharp contrast to the colors used to describe the leaves. The poet describes the wind as something which drives away death, buries the dead, and brings new life. It brings “living hues” and “ordours” which are filled with new life.

The poet calls, the wind, a “wild spirit” which destroys and yet also preserves life. He asks this spirit to hear his pleas. He praises the wind for its power. The wind is more powerful than angels, for the angels “of rain and lightening” are described as being “spread on the blue surface” of the wind.

The poet compares the wind to a “fierce Maenad”. He then describes the wind as the bringer of death, one who brings “black rain and fire and hail..”. The wind has waken up the Mediterranean sea from a whole summer of peaceful rest. The sea, here, is also personified. The poet says that the sea was dreaming of the old days of palaces and towers and that he was “quivering” at the memory of an “intenser day”. Shelley says, that the West Wind is so mighty that nature itself trembles in its sight.

The poet imagines, that he was a dead leaf, which the wind might carry away or a cloud, which the wind might blow or a wave, at the mercy of the power of the wind. The strength of the wind is “uncontrollable”. He then thinks of his own childhood. When he was a boy, he may have been about to “outstrip” the speed of the wind, but now his boyhood “seemed a vision”, so distant, and so long ago. Here the poet compares the strength of the wind to his own weakness that has come upon him as he has aged. Now, he begs the wind to “lift [him] as a wave, a leaf, a cloud”. He says, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed”. He wants to be like the wind, “tameless…swift, and proud”.

The poet wants to be like a lyre (or harp) played by the wind, to be like the dead leaves which fall to the ground when the wind blows. He asks the wind to come into him and make him alive so that his old self would be swept away. He asks the wind to “drive [his] dead thoughts over the universe” to give his thoughts a “new birth”. He thinks that perhaps this might even happen with the very words he is speaking now. He asks the wind to scatter his thoughts, as “ashes and sparks”, among mankind. Shelley personifies the wind as a god, but here he says, “The trumpet of prophecy”, he is referring to the end of the world as the Bible describes it. He wants the wind to blow this trumpet. In the last two lines of Ode to the West Wind, the poet says, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” This reveals his hope that there is an afterlife for him.