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Ode to the West Wind
9 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1820
About the author
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1,594 books1,307 followersPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy. However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life.
Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy. He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell. Famous for his association with his contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was also married to novelist Mary Shelley.
Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy. He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell. Famous for his association with his contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was also married to novelist Mary Shelley.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
September 3, 2016
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.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
October 28, 2023
he kinda ate that up but also what fkn language was that in, good luck 2 me
January 5, 2024
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
🩸
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
🩸
May 20, 2022
So emotional 😭
I fall upon the thorns of life!I bleed 🩸
If winter comes,can spring be far behind?! Wow
I fall upon the thorns of life!I bleed 🩸
If winter comes,can spring be far behind?! Wow
November 27, 2018
Read in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2
I've quite enjoyed some of Shelley's shorter poetry and I'd been itching to read this. It's a really lovely poem, with very strong themes of nature, mortality, and revolution and change. If you are new to poetry or unfamiliar with Romantic period poetry, it may be helpful to read through this poem once, then read an analysis on it. I usually always do after I read something just to be clear I understood it and took everything from it that I could have, just in case! I recommend Shmoop because I like their style.
This poem can be difficult to understand if you're unfamiliar with Shelley's style and even if you are familiar with it, you might want to give it a second read. I found I definitely needed the second read to really digest it! But I don't mind that. I really love Percy Bysshe Shelley and I loved West Wind. Around the time he wrote this, he and his wife, Mary Shelley had just lost their son, William. Percy uses strong imagery of death and hits on the theme of mortality constantly in this poem, which I can only relate to the recent loss of his son. Examples: "Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing" and "Each like a corpse within its grace, until / Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow"
However, Shelley also talks a lot about the cyclicity of seasons and regeneration come Spring. I think, perhaps, this provides insight into his deep feelings over the loss of his son and how he was trying to cope with it. Shelley continues in saying that he wishes to be spread by the wind, like the "leaves dead," and have his thoughts be spread out among people. Shelley was incredibly radical, politically and socially, as well as in literary terms; so, wishing to have his ideas spread out to others in the hopes of inciting change and revolution is not surprising to hear. I enjoy the way he uses the ways of the wind, how it causes such things like the spreading of seeds, which compares to the way he wants his thoughts spread, like seeds in other peoples' minds.
This is one of my favorite Percy Bysshe Shelley poems and I highly recommend it, though you may need to give it a second read or use the help of an analysis if you're unfamiliar with his work or Romantic period poetry. Ode of the West Wind is a very well-written and well-structured poem, with very strong themes that he carries very craftily throughout the entirety of the poem.
Quotes:
"Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, / Shook from the tangled bough of Heaven and Ocean"
"I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, / If Winder comes, can Spring be far behind?"
I've quite enjoyed some of Shelley's shorter poetry and I'd been itching to read this. It's a really lovely poem, with very strong themes of nature, mortality, and revolution and change. If you are new to poetry or unfamiliar with Romantic period poetry, it may be helpful to read through this poem once, then read an analysis on it. I usually always do after I read something just to be clear I understood it and took everything from it that I could have, just in case! I recommend Shmoop because I like their style.
This poem can be difficult to understand if you're unfamiliar with Shelley's style and even if you are familiar with it, you might want to give it a second read. I found I definitely needed the second read to really digest it! But I don't mind that. I really love Percy Bysshe Shelley and I loved West Wind. Around the time he wrote this, he and his wife, Mary Shelley had just lost their son, William. Percy uses strong imagery of death and hits on the theme of mortality constantly in this poem, which I can only relate to the recent loss of his son. Examples: "Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing" and "Each like a corpse within its grace, until / Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow"
However, Shelley also talks a lot about the cyclicity of seasons and regeneration come Spring. I think, perhaps, this provides insight into his deep feelings over the loss of his son and how he was trying to cope with it. Shelley continues in saying that he wishes to be spread by the wind, like the "leaves dead," and have his thoughts be spread out among people. Shelley was incredibly radical, politically and socially, as well as in literary terms; so, wishing to have his ideas spread out to others in the hopes of inciting change and revolution is not surprising to hear. I enjoy the way he uses the ways of the wind, how it causes such things like the spreading of seeds, which compares to the way he wants his thoughts spread, like seeds in other peoples' minds.
This is one of my favorite Percy Bysshe Shelley poems and I highly recommend it, though you may need to give it a second read or use the help of an analysis if you're unfamiliar with his work or Romantic period poetry. Ode of the West Wind is a very well-written and well-structured poem, with very strong themes that he carries very craftily throughout the entirety of the poem.
Quotes:
"Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, / Shook from the tangled bough of Heaven and Ocean"
"I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, / If Winder comes, can Spring be far behind?"
December 12, 2017
This is a beautiful and poignant poem about a man realizing that the west wind brings autumn and this winter, yet has the forethought to also realize if it brings winter, it also brings spring. As I said, it's a beautiful and poignant poem.
November 28, 2017
Absolutely suberb!!! Deep, moving, it shook the very depths of my heart. That´s what good poetry should do!
March 7, 2024
Adore this poem so much, I have to count it as a read on here. I’ve read it at least five times today, and completely torn it to pieces with annotations and thoughts. Side nerdy note: I really like terza rima in poetry.
February 2, 2020
The speaker adresses the West Wind by calling it "Wild". He evaluates it as a destroyer and preserver at the same time. He is of the view that this wind takes the old and pale leaves away and grows the new seeds.
The writer is may of the view that Westerns are making progresses amd eliminating the useless things. Is it so by the way?
The writer is may of the view that Westerns are making progresses amd eliminating the useless things. Is it so by the way?
August 27, 2021
Composed between ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ and ‘England in 1819', this ode replicates a concoction of dejection and sanguinity not unlike that found in these two poems; here, however, Shelley presents his emotions with a more personal flavour and finds his imagery, not in public events, but in the forces in nature.
The final part of ‘Prometheus Unbound’ which he was completing at this time makes a similar use of natural imagery, but the particular attention given to autumn, spring and the wind looks back to a passage in ‘The Revolt of Islam’, (Canto XI, Stanzas—XXI-XXX).
In a memo Shelley illustrates the instantaneous situation in which he wrote the poem:
“This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that, skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.”
Ode to the West Wind is romantic in the self-revelation of the poet.The poet fanatically desires to share the unconquerable energy of the West Wind and prays to it to lift him as it lifts a leaf, a cloud and a wave.
He laments that he has lost much of his boyish impetuosity He has now fallen on the thorns of life; troubles and oppressions of various sorts now afflict his soul. So he earnestly needs the help of the West Wind.
He desires to give himself entirely to the power of the West Wind so that it may blow through his mind as it blows through the forest. The poet prophesies that with the driving force of the West Wind his unrealized thoughts will herald the millennium, the golden age.
The poem is romantic in the poet’s mode of praying. Being human, the ‘poet has to pray. All the way through the poem he has been celebrating the wind in eulogy and prayer. This is atypical. He prays not to the ‘Holy Spirit’ but to the ‘Wild Spirit’, the destroyer and preserver, the sister wind of the cerulean breeze of the spring: and the first three sections of the poem ends with the invocation
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
The poem is also romantic in its use of imageries. In the poem, imageries follow one another in nippy succession and it is not always possible to keep pace with the hasty kaleidoscopic change of images.
As a matter of fact, this poem, hailed as one of Shelley's greatest poems, a "matchless ode", is not easy to understand. The chief complicatedness in understanding it occurs from the profusion of similes and metaphors which follow one another with an astounding rapidity. In the course of the poem, Shelley passes from a superlative realisation of Nature's storm and peace to equally great self-description and to end with, blends Nature and himself together with the intention of singing of the Golden Age of mankind.
Shelley watches the West Wind acting as a destroyer of the dead leaves and as a preserver of the living seeds. He finds it carrying clouds on its surface and sees the locks of the approaching storm spread on its airy waves. Further, he imagines the West Wind awakening the Mediterranean from its slumber and throwing the Atlantic into a hullabaloo so that the plants at the bottom of the ocean shed their leaves in fear.
What impresses Shelley most about the West Wind is its might, vigour, energy, and freedom. He finds it "uncontrollable", "swift", "tameless" and "proud". Next, he regards the West Wind as a artiste playing upon the autumnal forest which is its lyre.
Finally, the West Wind has the power to scatter the poet's thoughts over the universe and to broadcast his prophecy about the Golden Age of mankind.
Shelley reads more than a few symbolical meanings in the West Wind:
1) He sees the West Wind as a synchronized demonstration of annihilation and perpetuation. In point of fact, the West Wind obliterates the dead leaves and conserves the living seeds. To Shelley's mind, the West Wind appears as the slayer of the old order, and the preserver of the new. The West Wind, consequently, becomes an icon of revolution or mutability, which destroys yet reconstructs all things, while the leaves and seeds symbolise for him all things, material and spiritual, that are ruled by change.
2) Shelley regards the West Wind as a symbol of mourning. The sound of the West Wind passing through the forest is melancholy or mournful. Hence the West Wind is called a "dirge of the dying year".
3) The West Wind is a symbol of Shelley's own personality. As a boy he possessed the same qualities which the West Wind possesses. Like the West Wind, he was tameless, swift, proud, wild, uncontrollable, and fierce. There is thus an affinity between the West Wind and the poet.
This affinity encourages the poet to appeal to the West Wind for help, so that the West Wind is not only a symbol of his temperament and personality but also a symbol of aid and relief to him in his distress. He looks upon the West Wind as a saviour.
4) The West Wind is regarded as a symbol of the power that will bring about the Golden Age of mankind. The poet expresses the faith that "If Winter comes, Spring cannot be far behind.
In the last stanza, as the first, the West Wind appears as a symbol of revolutionary change that would aid to a "new birth" and will regenerate the "unawakened earth".
Shelley was a revolutionary. He was most keenly dissatisfied with the prevalent order of things. He hated political tyranny and orthodox Christianity, the wickedness of religion, the evil, and the wars which made the life of men so unhappy and miserable. He wanted to liberate mankind from the menace of political, religious, and intellectual slavery. This attitude of mind is undoubtedly reflected in this poem. The West Wind is depicted as a destroyer of the old leaves and a preserver of the living seeds. Symbolically interpreted, the West Wind is a destroyer of the old order of society and a preserver of the new.
In other words, the West Wind is a symbol of those forces which brush away old modes of life, old institutions and old customs, and which herald new ways of thought and new patterns of life.
In the last stanza, the West Wind symbolises the forces that will bring about the Golden Age of mankind, when human nature would become perfect and when Beauty and Love would rule the universe. Shelley dreamed of a millennium and believed in the perfectibility of human nature. Of this belief the West Wind is the proclaimer.
Shelley's idealism is evident from this belief. Shelley was an idealist, a dreamer, a visionary, and we clearly see him in this light in this poem in which he utters a prophecy about the radiant future of mankind. Shelley expresses the hope that his "dead thoughts" will quicken a new birth and thus bring about a revolutionary change in the social, political, and religious set-up of human society. The poem has thus a prophetic quality. In other words, the poet speaks in his character of a prophet, saying. "If-Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" Shelley was a pessimist as regards the present of mankind, but he was a radiant optimist about the future.
The West Wind drives away the dead leaves; the word dead suggests theidea of ghost. The dark cold bed to which the ‘ripe seeds are driven’ suggests the idea of the grave. The clouds are represented as the locks of ‘the approaching storm’. The frost is represented as the lyre. The poet’s soul is likened to the forest in autumn. His words are sparks. The poet concludes with the image of dreary winter followed by spring.
Of all the romantics, Shelley is the most imaginative. Imagination is the keynote of Ode to the West Wind. Here his imagination soars intothe upper regions and the action of the West Wind follows:
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose ‘louds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
His, imagination dives deep below:
……………………..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:
Shelley is the most personal of all the poets. His self-revelation is complete in Ode to the West Wind. Here he says that he has lost much ofhis boyish impetuosity. He has now fallen on the thorns of life; he bleeds.
Troubles and oppressions now afflict his soul. The poet addresses thewind personally as if it were a deity. He likens himself to the leaf, thecloud and the wave subject to the force of the wind, but recognizes thatage and experience have deprived him of the freedom and hope he hadfelt when he was younger.
Shelley is a nature poet. The West Wind is described in all its violence and awful magnificence. It blows over the earth and drives thedead leaves away. It is a wild spirit. It raises a great commotion while itblows in the sky.
The clouds are shaken and blown. When it blows overthe Mediterranean, the wind lashes it into waves and cleaves passagesfor itself through the glossy surface of the ocean.
Shelley is a poet as well as a prophet. In Ode to the West Wind, the poet and the prophet have become one. He is little interested, in the past. He is always aware of the present when it jarred on his social idealism.To renovate the world, to bring about utopia is his constant aim.
Shelley’s belief in the poet’s role as prophet, which he argues so powerfully in ‘A Defence of Poetry’, observes J. R. Watson, is nowhere more uniquevocally stated in verse than it is in Ode to the West Wind: it is a cry to the world to be renewed, awakened, and reinvigorated. For this purpose, Shelley bravely disregards the archetype: it is usually spring that awakens theworld, but by choosing the wind of the autumn storm he does two things.
He makes it abundantly clear that he is not forcing the natural worldinto his own mould, but the poem is occasioned by a specific momentand not the other way round; secondly he is seeing the process of rebirthas being naturally preceded by the destruction of the old unregenerate,world.
So the wind is ‘Destroyer and Preserver”.
With matchless fervourand eloquence the poet sings:’
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Shelley personifies the West Wind and gives it an independent life. He also personifies the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, giving each a separate existence. These forces of Nature are so vitally imagined that they become real presences, inspiring wonder and awe. This giving of individual life to the different forces of Nature is known as Shelley's mytho-poetic quality or the quality of making myths.
Shelley is unique in English poetry by virtue of this power. For him the forces of Nature have the same reality as human beings. In this poem, he renders natural phenomena in terms of conscious life. All the works of the West Wind are imagined as its conscious and deliberate acts.
In the final two stanzas, he ponders about the possibilities that his alteration by the wind would have on his skill as a poet. If he could be a leaf, a cloud, or a wave, he would be able to partake straightforwardly in the regenerative process he sees taking place in the natural world. His words would become like these natural objects, which are dispersed about the world and which serve as elements to help bring about new life. He yearns that, much like the seeds he has seen scattered about, his “leaves”, his “dead thoughts”— could be carried across the world by the West Wind so that they could “quicken to a new birth” at a later time, when others might take heed of their message.
The final question with which the poet ends this poem is actually a note of hope: The “death” that occurs in winter is customarily followed by a “new life” every spring. The sequence of the seasons that he sees occurring around him gives Shelley optimism that his works might share the fate of other objects in nature.
They may be unheeded a moment or two, but at some point they will have an enormous brunt on humankind.
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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Brilliant is such a gargantuan understatement!
The final part of ‘Prometheus Unbound’ which he was completing at this time makes a similar use of natural imagery, but the particular attention given to autumn, spring and the wind looks back to a passage in ‘The Revolt of Islam’, (Canto XI, Stanzas—XXI-XXX).
In a memo Shelley illustrates the instantaneous situation in which he wrote the poem:
“This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that, skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.”
Ode to the West Wind is romantic in the self-revelation of the poet.The poet fanatically desires to share the unconquerable energy of the West Wind and prays to it to lift him as it lifts a leaf, a cloud and a wave.
He laments that he has lost much of his boyish impetuosity He has now fallen on the thorns of life; troubles and oppressions of various sorts now afflict his soul. So he earnestly needs the help of the West Wind.
He desires to give himself entirely to the power of the West Wind so that it may blow through his mind as it blows through the forest. The poet prophesies that with the driving force of the West Wind his unrealized thoughts will herald the millennium, the golden age.
The poem is romantic in the poet’s mode of praying. Being human, the ‘poet has to pray. All the way through the poem he has been celebrating the wind in eulogy and prayer. This is atypical. He prays not to the ‘Holy Spirit’ but to the ‘Wild Spirit’, the destroyer and preserver, the sister wind of the cerulean breeze of the spring: and the first three sections of the poem ends with the invocation
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
The poem is also romantic in its use of imageries. In the poem, imageries follow one another in nippy succession and it is not always possible to keep pace with the hasty kaleidoscopic change of images.
As a matter of fact, this poem, hailed as one of Shelley's greatest poems, a "matchless ode", is not easy to understand. The chief complicatedness in understanding it occurs from the profusion of similes and metaphors which follow one another with an astounding rapidity. In the course of the poem, Shelley passes from a superlative realisation of Nature's storm and peace to equally great self-description and to end with, blends Nature and himself together with the intention of singing of the Golden Age of mankind.
Shelley watches the West Wind acting as a destroyer of the dead leaves and as a preserver of the living seeds. He finds it carrying clouds on its surface and sees the locks of the approaching storm spread on its airy waves. Further, he imagines the West Wind awakening the Mediterranean from its slumber and throwing the Atlantic into a hullabaloo so that the plants at the bottom of the ocean shed their leaves in fear.
What impresses Shelley most about the West Wind is its might, vigour, energy, and freedom. He finds it "uncontrollable", "swift", "tameless" and "proud". Next, he regards the West Wind as a artiste playing upon the autumnal forest which is its lyre.
Finally, the West Wind has the power to scatter the poet's thoughts over the universe and to broadcast his prophecy about the Golden Age of mankind.
Shelley reads more than a few symbolical meanings in the West Wind:
1) He sees the West Wind as a synchronized demonstration of annihilation and perpetuation. In point of fact, the West Wind obliterates the dead leaves and conserves the living seeds. To Shelley's mind, the West Wind appears as the slayer of the old order, and the preserver of the new. The West Wind, consequently, becomes an icon of revolution or mutability, which destroys yet reconstructs all things, while the leaves and seeds symbolise for him all things, material and spiritual, that are ruled by change.
2) Shelley regards the West Wind as a symbol of mourning. The sound of the West Wind passing through the forest is melancholy or mournful. Hence the West Wind is called a "dirge of the dying year".
3) The West Wind is a symbol of Shelley's own personality. As a boy he possessed the same qualities which the West Wind possesses. Like the West Wind, he was tameless, swift, proud, wild, uncontrollable, and fierce. There is thus an affinity between the West Wind and the poet.
This affinity encourages the poet to appeal to the West Wind for help, so that the West Wind is not only a symbol of his temperament and personality but also a symbol of aid and relief to him in his distress. He looks upon the West Wind as a saviour.
4) The West Wind is regarded as a symbol of the power that will bring about the Golden Age of mankind. The poet expresses the faith that "If Winter comes, Spring cannot be far behind.
In the last stanza, as the first, the West Wind appears as a symbol of revolutionary change that would aid to a "new birth" and will regenerate the "unawakened earth".
Shelley was a revolutionary. He was most keenly dissatisfied with the prevalent order of things. He hated political tyranny and orthodox Christianity, the wickedness of religion, the evil, and the wars which made the life of men so unhappy and miserable. He wanted to liberate mankind from the menace of political, religious, and intellectual slavery. This attitude of mind is undoubtedly reflected in this poem. The West Wind is depicted as a destroyer of the old leaves and a preserver of the living seeds. Symbolically interpreted, the West Wind is a destroyer of the old order of society and a preserver of the new.
In other words, the West Wind is a symbol of those forces which brush away old modes of life, old institutions and old customs, and which herald new ways of thought and new patterns of life.
In the last stanza, the West Wind symbolises the forces that will bring about the Golden Age of mankind, when human nature would become perfect and when Beauty and Love would rule the universe. Shelley dreamed of a millennium and believed in the perfectibility of human nature. Of this belief the West Wind is the proclaimer.
Shelley's idealism is evident from this belief. Shelley was an idealist, a dreamer, a visionary, and we clearly see him in this light in this poem in which he utters a prophecy about the radiant future of mankind. Shelley expresses the hope that his "dead thoughts" will quicken a new birth and thus bring about a revolutionary change in the social, political, and religious set-up of human society. The poem has thus a prophetic quality. In other words, the poet speaks in his character of a prophet, saying. "If-Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" Shelley was a pessimist as regards the present of mankind, but he was a radiant optimist about the future.
The West Wind drives away the dead leaves; the word dead suggests theidea of ghost. The dark cold bed to which the ‘ripe seeds are driven’ suggests the idea of the grave. The clouds are represented as the locks of ‘the approaching storm’. The frost is represented as the lyre. The poet’s soul is likened to the forest in autumn. His words are sparks. The poet concludes with the image of dreary winter followed by spring.
Of all the romantics, Shelley is the most imaginative. Imagination is the keynote of Ode to the West Wind. Here his imagination soars intothe upper regions and the action of the West Wind follows:
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose ‘louds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
His, imagination dives deep below:
……………………..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:
Shelley is the most personal of all the poets. His self-revelation is complete in Ode to the West Wind. Here he says that he has lost much ofhis boyish impetuosity. He has now fallen on the thorns of life; he bleeds.
Troubles and oppressions now afflict his soul. The poet addresses thewind personally as if it were a deity. He likens himself to the leaf, thecloud and the wave subject to the force of the wind, but recognizes thatage and experience have deprived him of the freedom and hope he hadfelt when he was younger.
Shelley is a nature poet. The West Wind is described in all its violence and awful magnificence. It blows over the earth and drives thedead leaves away. It is a wild spirit. It raises a great commotion while itblows in the sky.
The clouds are shaken and blown. When it blows overthe Mediterranean, the wind lashes it into waves and cleaves passagesfor itself through the glossy surface of the ocean.
Shelley is a poet as well as a prophet. In Ode to the West Wind, the poet and the prophet have become one. He is little interested, in the past. He is always aware of the present when it jarred on his social idealism.To renovate the world, to bring about utopia is his constant aim.
Shelley’s belief in the poet’s role as prophet, which he argues so powerfully in ‘A Defence of Poetry’, observes J. R. Watson, is nowhere more uniquevocally stated in verse than it is in Ode to the West Wind: it is a cry to the world to be renewed, awakened, and reinvigorated. For this purpose, Shelley bravely disregards the archetype: it is usually spring that awakens theworld, but by choosing the wind of the autumn storm he does two things.
He makes it abundantly clear that he is not forcing the natural worldinto his own mould, but the poem is occasioned by a specific momentand not the other way round; secondly he is seeing the process of rebirthas being naturally preceded by the destruction of the old unregenerate,world.
So the wind is ‘Destroyer and Preserver”.
With matchless fervourand eloquence the poet sings:’
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Shelley personifies the West Wind and gives it an independent life. He also personifies the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, giving each a separate existence. These forces of Nature are so vitally imagined that they become real presences, inspiring wonder and awe. This giving of individual life to the different forces of Nature is known as Shelley's mytho-poetic quality or the quality of making myths.
Shelley is unique in English poetry by virtue of this power. For him the forces of Nature have the same reality as human beings. In this poem, he renders natural phenomena in terms of conscious life. All the works of the West Wind are imagined as its conscious and deliberate acts.
In the final two stanzas, he ponders about the possibilities that his alteration by the wind would have on his skill as a poet. If he could be a leaf, a cloud, or a wave, he would be able to partake straightforwardly in the regenerative process he sees taking place in the natural world. His words would become like these natural objects, which are dispersed about the world and which serve as elements to help bring about new life. He yearns that, much like the seeds he has seen scattered about, his “leaves”, his “dead thoughts”— could be carried across the world by the West Wind so that they could “quicken to a new birth” at a later time, when others might take heed of their message.
The final question with which the poet ends this poem is actually a note of hope: The “death” that occurs in winter is customarily followed by a “new life” every spring. The sequence of the seasons that he sees occurring around him gives Shelley optimism that his works might share the fate of other objects in nature.
They may be unheeded a moment or two, but at some point they will have an enormous brunt on humankind.
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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Brilliant is such a gargantuan understatement!
August 26, 2015
Dioses del Más Allá... Cuánta pasión, cuán ardor se siente en cada palabra. Y Percy ensarta su saeta poética en mi corazón. <3
June 28, 2017
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
May 10, 2016
I love Shelley but this was just meh.
July 20, 2017
this poem was a great innovation when it first came out.
its revolutionary soul was perfectly depicted through the amazing words of the poet, i love it
its revolutionary soul was perfectly depicted through the amazing words of the poet, i love it
June 11, 2019
A majestic treasure of poetry.
July 19, 2020
Tahla balada se mi prostě zapsala do srdce. Měla jsem ji číst v němčině, ale k dispozici jsem měla překlad ze začátku 20. století, a popravdě jsem měla problém pochopit ji. Tak jsem si ji přečetla v originále. To už bylo lepší (což mě překvapilo, vzhledem k tomu, jak málo s angličtinou v posledních měsících pracuji). No a nakonec mi to nedalo a zachtělo se mi porovnat originál také s českým překladem (od Jarmily Urbánkové, ne s tím od Vrchlického).
Úplně nejvíc mě zasáhl čtvrtý zpěv. A obecně to spojení něčeho "špatného" a zároveň něco nového, plného naděje, ta touha po změně, odhodlání... A tolik drobných symbolů, které se dají vykládat samozřejmě z perspektivy "teď zkoumáme, co je tu romantického", ale mohou vás zasáhnout i osobně, protože některé problémy se neřeší pouze v určitých epochách (literární) historie, ale pořád. Minimálně na osobní rovině.
Romantismus je mi sympatický (a vždycky byl) právě pro svou subjektivitu, pro osobní nasazení autorových myšlenek a pocitů. Jasně, ne každé dílo spadající sem mě zaujalo nebo nadchlo, ale většina přeci jen ano. No a právě Óda západnímu větru všemu nasadila korunu.
Úplně nejvíc mě zasáhl čtvrtý zpěv. A obecně to spojení něčeho "špatného" a zároveň něco nového, plného naděje, ta touha po změně, odhodlání... A tolik drobných symbolů, které se dají vykládat samozřejmě z perspektivy "teď zkoumáme, co je tu romantického", ale mohou vás zasáhnout i osobně, protože některé problémy se neřeší pouze v určitých epochách (literární) historie, ale pořád. Minimálně na osobní rovině.
Romantismus je mi sympatický (a vždycky byl) právě pro svou subjektivitu, pro osobní nasazení autorových myšlenek a pocitů. Jasně, ne každé dílo spadající sem mě zaujalo nebo nadchlo, ale většina přeci jen ano. No a právě Óda západnímu větru všemu nasadila korunu.
January 30, 2023
Short and powerful, Shelly’s beautiful use of language and rhythm in this poem invoke wonderful imagery. It is a poem full of passion and life, with elegant descriptions and bold vocabulary— perfectly portraying its themes of death, rebirth, and strength. A beautiful, short piece that I truly and thoroughly enjoyed.
June 2, 2024
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
We are as helpless, as wounded, as shattered as Shelley was 200 years ago. How heart breaking is it that we experience same shattered feelings with people of places we never been to, and of time that is unknown to us.
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
We are as helpless, as wounded, as shattered as Shelley was 200 years ago. How heart breaking is it that we experience same shattered feelings with people of places we never been to, and of time that is unknown to us.
February 14, 2019
I was in my customs class and honestly anything that has to do with customs processes makes me feel dumb so I just pulled this out on a poetry site and read it as I pretended to be working on the assignment we had.
June 11, 2018
For the most part it was great.
January 8, 2019
He invokes the wild west wind of autumn, which scatters the dead leaves and spread seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring ....to spread his thoughts across the universe 🌿
September 27, 2019
Eh I don't really have anything to say its just there.
December 24, 2019
"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
November 25, 2021
The sentiment is lovely, but dude got a bulk deal on adjectives.
April 18, 2022
Κορυφαίο ποίημα στα χρονικά της ποίησης.
April 14, 2023
Shelley sure knew how to flatter mother nature...
June 14, 2023
My kinda emo🖤
October 12, 2023
powerful west wind, come visit me and take my dead leaves away, I need to bloom again
November 23, 2023
Probably my favourite poem.
January 9, 2024
percy and i are homies now, we just get each other
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