ODE TO THE WEST WIND BY P. B. SHELLEY

ODE TO THE WEST WIND BY P. B. SHELLEY

 

 

 

 

                             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 fleeting.

                                    Yellow, and black, 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 chariot o’er dreaming earth, and fill                               10

                                    (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

                                    With living hues and odors 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.

                                    Shock from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean

                                    Angels of rain and lightning; they are spread

                                    On the blue surface of thine aery surge

                                    Like the bright hair uplifted from the head                            20

                                    Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

                                    Of the horizon to the Zenith’s height,

                                    The looks of the approaching storm: The dirge.

                                    Of the dying year, to which this closing night

                                    Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,

                                    Vaulted with all thy congregated might

                                    Of vapors, 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 laid,                                 30

                                    Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams

                                    Beside a pumice isle in Baise’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 for below

                                    The sea blooms and the oozy woods which wear

                                    The sapless foliage of the ocean, know                                   40

                                    Thy voice and suddenly gray grow with fear,

                                    And tremble and despoil them-selves Oh, hear!

                                                                                    VI

                                    If I were a dead leaf thou mightiest 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 sky speed                                 50

Scare seemed 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 chained and bowed

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,                          60

Sweet though in sadness, be thou, spirit fierce.

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse

Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to awaken earth

The trumpet of prophecy! O, wind,

If Winner comes, can spring be far behind?                          70

CONTENT ANALYSIS of the POEM

 

Ode to the West Wind is a celebration of the West Wind for which the poet has much respect. Stanzas one to three describe the west wind, its activities and capabilities.

The wind’s effect on leaves and seeds are graphically presented. He carries them to their dark wintry bed, where through the effect of rain, they germinate and produce sweet buds like flocks to feed in air. The wind, according to the poet, is seen as an angel of rain and lightning.

 

In the next stanza, we can clearly see the poet’s long friendship with the wind.

In the last stanza, his objective is to find a way of not disturbing his poetic thoughts. He wished to be an apostle of peace and harmony carried on by the wings of the ubiquitous west wind across the world.

POETIC DEVICES

 

(i)    Personification: Line 1, “breath of autumn”.

(ii)  Simile: Line 3, “like ghost”, line 8 “like a corpse”.

(iii)Apostrophe: “O wild west wind …”

 

(iv)                        Symbols and images: portray fertility, reproduction, abundance vegetation; classical legends and the supernatural are poetically adopted applied in the poem.

(v)  The stanza takes after the Italian terza rima. Each stanza consists of a set of four tercets followed by a concluding couplet. The rhyme pattern of the first stanza is aba/bcb/cdc/ded/ee.

(vi)                        Biblical allusions: Lines 6, “chariotest”; line 25, “Sepulchre”.

 

THEMES

 

(i)                The beauty of nature

(ii)               Theme of destruction

(iii)             Desire to do good

 

MOOD

 

The mood of the poet is that of bewilderment astonishment. There is also the mood of regret since the poet cannot equal the power of the wind.