Shelley, Bysshe Shelley - Ode to the West Wind

What is The Poetry of the Wind?

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 odorous plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O, hear!

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 aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

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 dyingt year, to which this closing night

Will be 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: O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline 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

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 grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

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 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 the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proudPART 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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scqatter, 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?

Description of the Poetic Structure

This poem is made up of five parts. Each part has five stanzas; they are four tercets and one couplet. Lines have a regular length and begin with capital Letters. Lines are aligned; there is a regular punctuation. There is a regular rhyme scheme: ABA-BCB-CDC-…In this poem there are some exclamations,some run-on-lines and also some personifications. There many archaisms like “Thou”: There are some similes and there is also one alliteration of W. Shelley describes the landscape near Florence and the Arno river; it is a dark atmosphere.

Analysis of the First Part

In the first part: object is the dead leaves; the sense that was involved is the sight; the land is a bed because it becomes a grane. The Spring represents the rebirth, life; while the wind is destroyer in autumn (death), but preserver in spring (rebirth). In the second part: there are the effects of the wind in the sky; the clouds are pushed, are as angels, announcers. In the third part: there are the effects of the wind in the sea; the fourth season, the summer appears.
The fourth part refers to the first three parts because it takes again the effects of the wind in the

earth, in the sky and in the sea. In the fifth part: there is the poet’s thought.