Analysis of Shellys Ode to the West Wind

Analysis of Shellys Ode to the West Wind

Analysis of Shelly's "Ode to the West Wind" “Ode to the West Wind” is a poem of deep despair as well as one of vivid imagery. The first section is fairly straightforward with constant references to death, corpses and destruction that Shelly uses as a metaphor for autumn. The allusion to disease and darkness describes the West Wind in this first section. Shelly sees it as a sort of ‘grim reaper’ but seems to come back from the whole topic by also calling it the “preserver”. In the second section Shelly takes a more lofty perspective in the beginning mentioning heaven and angels and then moves to give a depiction of hell in the last line of the section with “black rain and fire and hail will burst”. To be a little more precise, the second section is one comparing an oncoming storm to the end of a year. Perhaps Shelly feels that the next year will not be as good as the last and one can even speculate that the west winds are the winds of change or even of evil. I feel that the third section really supports the theory that Shelly did portray the west wind as the bringer of evil. The wind is described to be awakened from a place of peace and beauty. The line “Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear” seems to describe a sense of darkness and loathing, a chilling feeling flowing through the veins. The west wind is power.

The fourth section plays on the feeling that this wind is allpowerful and Shelly seems to give the impression of bowing down before it. Impulses, uncontrollable, tame-less are all words used to describe the wind in this section. In almost a begging tone the speaker of the poem asks to be taken away from his pain as said “Oh! Lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! / I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”. Going back in the poem though the west wind seems to have created this and the speaker loathes it, but here shows he also still needs it. The final section seems to come to terms with the west wind. The asking for music even though the leaves are gone and there is not to celebrate shows this perspective: I will still play but it will be one of sadness. The speaker asks for his ‘dead’ thoughts to be taken away and to scatter them for all to know. This shows also he has come to terms with the find by again asking its help for the speaker to come to terms with himself. In the end it is the realization to the speaker that spring follows the dismal winter the west wind brings that seems to end the fairly dark poem on a lighter note. A first-person persona addresses the west wind in five stanzas. It is strong and fearsome. In the first stanza, the wind blows the leaves of autumn. In the second stanza, the wind blows the clouds in the sky. In the third stanza, the wind blows across an island and the waves of the sea. In the fourth stanza, the persona imagines being the leaf, cloud, or wave, sharing in the wind’s strength. He desires to be lifted up rather than caught low on “the thorns of life,” for he sees himself as like the wind: “tameless, and swift, and proud.” In the final stanza, he asks the wind to play upon him like a lyre; he wants to share the wind’s fierce spirit. In

turn, he would have the power to spread his verse throughout the world, reawakening it. Analysis The poet is directing his speech to the wind and all that it has the power to do as it takes charge of the rest of nature and blows across the earth and through the seasons, able both to preserve and to destroy all in its path. The wind takes control over clouds, seas, weather, and more. The poet offers that the wind over the Mediterranean Sea was an inspiration for the poem. Recognizing its power, the wind becomes a metaphor for nature’s awe-inspiring spirit. By the final stanza, the speaker has come to terms with the wind’s power over him, and he requests inspiration and subjectivity. He looks to nature’s power to assist him in his work of poetry and prays that the wind will deliver his words across the land and through time as it does with all other objects in nature. The form of the poem is consistent in pattern. Each stanza is fourteen lines in length, using the rhyming pattern of aba bcb cdc ded ee. This is called terza rima, the form used by Dante in his Divine Comedy. Keeping in mind that this is an ode, a choral celebration, the tone of the speaker understandably includes excitement, pleasure, joy, and hope. Shelley draws a parallel between the seasonal cycles of the wind and that of his ever-changing spirit. Here, nature, in the form of the wind, is presented, according to Abrams “as the outer correspondent to an inner change from apathy to spiritual vitality, and from imaginative sterility to a burst of creative power.” Thematically, then, this poem is about the inspiration Shelley draws from nature. The “breath of autumn being” is Shelley’s atheistic version of the Christian Holy Spirit. Instead of relying on traditional religion, Shelley focuses his praise around the wind’s role in the various cycles in nature— death, regeneration, “preservation,” and “destruction.” The speaker

begins by praising the wind, using anthropomorphic techniques (wintry bed, chariots, corpses, and clarions) to personalize the great natural spirit in hopes that it will somehow heed his plea. The speaker is aware of his own mortality and the immortality of his subject. This drives him to beg that he too can be inspired (“make me thy lyre”) and carried (“be through my lips to unawakened earth”) through land and time. The first two stanzas are mere praise for the wind’s power, covered in simile and allusion to all that which the wind has the power to do: “loosen,” “spread,” “shed,” and “burst.” In the fourth and fifth stanzas, the speaker enters into the poem, seeking (hoping) for equal treatment along with all other objects in nature, at least on the productive side. The poet offers humility in the hope that the wind will assist him in achieving his quest to “drive [his] dead thoughts over the universe.” Ultimately, the poet is thankful for the inspiration he is able to draw from nature’s spirit, and he hopes that it will also be the same spirit that carries his words across the land where he also can be a source of inspiration.