INTRODUCTION
In this poem I am going to inform about Shelley and one of his
poems: Ode to West Wind.
“Percy Bysshe Shelley was born into a rich
family from
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley
20/11/2006
section: Shelley
Home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
)
“Shelley belongs to the generation of English romantic poets, the same
as Wordsworth or Coleridge. Shelley died young like Byron and Keats. The
feeling intensity emphasized by romanticism associated this one with the
youth.”
( http://www.bartelby.com/65/ro/romantic.html
26/11/2006
section: romanticism
Home: http://www.bartelby.com/ )
“In this poem the feelings of happiness are emphasized, the faith in
humanity and optimism among the romantics. “
( http://www.bartelby.com/65/ro/romantic.html
26/11/2006
section: romanticism
Home: http://www.bartelby.com/ )
“Shelley’s themes are the same as the romantics’ poets; beauty, love,
nature, freedom of politic, creativity and the imagination. Because of his sensitivity
this author used these themes as nobody had done it before”.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley
20/11/2006
section: Shelley
Home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
)
ANALYSIS
Summary
“The speaker invokes the "wild West Wind" of autumn, which
disperses the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the
spring. The poet asks if the wind, a "destroyer and preserver (l.
14)," hears him. The poet called the wind the "dirge / Of the dying year (l.23, 24)," and describes how it
stirs up violent storms, and continued imploring it to hear him.
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/ 25/11/2006
section: poetry study guides
home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
The poet says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or
if he were a cloud it could carry, or if he were a wave it could push, or even
if he were, as a boy, "the comrade (l.49)" of the wind's
"wandering over heaven (l.49)," then he would never have needed to
pray to the wind and invoke its powers.
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/ 25/11/2006
section: poetry study guides
home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
The poet asks the wind to "make me thy lyre (l.57),"
to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, "like
withered leaves, to quicken a new birth (l.64)." He asks the wind to
scatter his words among mankind, to be the "trumpet of a prophecy (l.
69)."
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/ 25/11/2006
section: poetry study guides
home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
Form
“Each of the five parts of "Ode to the West Wind" contains
five stanzas (four stanzas of three lines and a two-line couplet, all metered
in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each part follows a pattern known as
“terza
rima”. In this three-line stanza, the
first and third lines rhyme, and the middle line does not. The end sound of
that middle line is used as the rhyme for the first and third lines in the next
stanza. The final couplet rhymes with the middle line of the last three-line
stanza. In this way each of the five parts of the Ode follows this scheme: ABA
BCB CDC DED EE.
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/ 25/11/2006
section: poetry study guides
home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
Commentary
Shelley invokes the wind magically, describing its power and its role as
both "destroyer and preserver (l.14)". The poet asks the wind to sweep him out of
his torpor "as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! (l.53)" In the fifth section,
the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a metaphor
for his own art, the expressive capacity that drives "dead thoughts"
(l.63) like "withered leaves" (l.64) over the universe, to
"quicken a new birth" (l.64). That is, to quicken the coming of the
spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a "spring" of human
consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality. Shelley asks the wind to be
his spirit, and in the same movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his
poetic faculty, which will play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind
strums the leaves of the trees.”.
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/ 25/11/2006
section: poetry study guides
home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
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 5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd 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 10
(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, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15
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 airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20
Of some fierce Mænad, 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,
25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue
Lull'd
by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O 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 45
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 50
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have
striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! 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 55
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 wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
65
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?
(http://www.bartleby.com/101/610.html
26/11/2006
Section: The oxford book of english
Home: http://www.bartleby.com/ )
CONCLUSION
“The thematic implication is significant: whereas the
older generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a source of truth and
authentic experience, the younger generation largely viewed nature as a source
of beauty and aesthetic experience. In this poem, Shelley explicitly links
nature with art by finding powerful natural metaphors with which to express his
ideas about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic
expression”
( http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/
25/11/2006
Section: poetry
study guides
Home: http://www.sparknotes.com/ )
“Shelley is essentially a visionary of this change; he invokes the
powerful West Wind, a force he identifies with evil, his ever-changing world,
and his own subconscious, to work through him to bring about the change that he
so badly desires for the world, and believes could be possible. Shelley's poem
is his attempt to let the West Wind work through him”
(http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5599/literature/shelley.html 3/1/2007
Section: Romanticism
and Shelley’s “Ode to west wind”
Home:http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5599/navigation-map/ncsa.map
Author: Patrick Mooney (May 12, 1997)
Ø
In this poem the Nature is what we knew as such,
Shelley describe with Nature words. This poem seems to be a gospel because of
the rhythm and because of he is invoking to the west wind, this I heart that is
called the witches. So, here we can see a characteristic romantic poet that
used the nature to describe something, usually a feeling.
Academic
year 2006/2007
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Carmen Mora Vives
mamovi3@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press