By: Jalal Nasser Salman Swadi Alghalib

Third class (A)

Moring study

College of Education for Human sciences

Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”

Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is a lyrical poem of five stanzas., written in 1819 near Florence, Italy. It
was originally published in 1820 by Charles in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound.
Shelley appended a footnote in which he said: “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 lighting peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.”

In the first stanza and from the very beginning, the poet addresses the West wind, describing it as a
wild and brutal wind. It is wild because it moves and causes change. The west wind is also described
as “breath of Autumn” which connotes that it is a spirit. As if the “Autumn” is a physical body and the
West Wind is his sole. In the first part of the poem, the poet describes the west wind’s effect on earth.
Because of the effect of the “unseen” presence of the West Wind, the living leaves are falling off the
trees and slowly decaying. Donahue (2014: 4) comments “Yet, one might argue that they
simultaneously describe the exact opposite – namely, the leaves slowly becoming more and more
alive.” First, the ‘leaves’ are ‘dead.’ Then they are slightly less dead ‘ghosts’, those apparitions are
neither alive nor dead but somewhere in between. The ghosts do not passively fall from the tree but
are now actively ‘fleeing.’ Finally, the leaves are not qualified as dead or as half-dead ghosts but as
“[y]ellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red. 'Pestilence stricken multitudes,’ as living humans struck
with pestilence, with the color of the face during fever. “But on the other, the cycle of the leaves
seems to be one of slow and organic decay without interruption; and in the final figuration the cycle
loops back upon itself as the living humans are fevered and dying,” according to Donahue(2014: 5).
However, the west wind, accompanied with the leaves, might have a symbolic meaning; i.e the dead
leaves are said to represent a decaying nation, Britain, while the wind comes from a very rising nation,
USA. The speaker hopes that this west wind brings change with it to the decaying nation, Britain,
whether economically, educationally, and artistically.

The speaker invokes the West Wind as carrying ‘winged’ seeds to their graves ‘ground’ like charioteer
who drives corpses to their graves until the ‘azure sister’, spring wind, comes and rebirth them. These
seeds might be the seeds of knowledge, education, and poetry. When the sister of the west wind,
spring wind, plays her clarion, it will announce the coming of life again. Describing the earth as
‘dreaming’ means that the nation is asleep, and it needs to be awaken. The poet describe the West
Wind in a contrasted way; serving as a destroyer and preserver simultaneously. It has a double
significance for the poet. It performs two strikingly contrasted missions; as a destroyer, it ends the
Summer, but, as a preserver, it also brings in the Spring. During the early part of February, the
conqueror of Summer returns to conquer Winter; it comes to bring life as, a few months earlier, it has
brought death. The wind is seen as both radical and conservative, both destroyer and preserver; that
showed us death as but a transitional phase of life.
(Kapsteun) remarks “The poem epitomizes Shelley’s conception of the eternal cycle Of life and death and resurrection in
the universe.”

Up to this point, or throughout the first division of the poem, Shelley has been chiefly occupied with the West Wind's
task on the earth. The second division treats of the Wind in the heaven. In the metaphor, “decaying leaves” falling from
“tangled boughs” onto the earth are compared to the clouds that come from “Heaven and Ocean.” In other words, the
combination of Heaven, the sky with the sun in it, and Ocean, causes water to evaporate into the sky and form clouds.
These clouds then float on the “stream” of the West Wind the way dead leaves float in a real stream.

Hair is a simile when the wind spreads the cloud and the dead leaves float in the stream, leaves fall from the branches of
trees, whole the cloud from the sky and the sea, which together like Angles to create clouds. The lightning is compared
to the shining hair of an airy woman whose hair is spread from the horizon to the peak. The storm is also compared to
locks of hair. (Fierce Manad) that comes from Greek mythology. Manad is a wild savage woman. Here, this Manad
doesn’t brush ‘comb’ her hair much as wild and crazy woman. The poet puts simile between the thunder clouds that
spread through the airy ‘blue surface’ (sky) of the West Wind and the Manad’s hair lock of the approaching storm like
clouds go vertically through the sky.

What should be a slow, seamless process of transformation from summer to autumn is instead a single night, a sudden
break marked in ‘this closing night.’ Singing a ‘dirge’ to the ‘dying year’ this intermittent night is itself featured as an
absence: “a vast sepulcher” gapes. The dome of vapors above the empty sepulcher in the sudden gap between seasons
then suddenly joined into a ‘solid atmosphere.’ And from this solid atmosphere a sudden ‘burst’ produces forth ‘black
rain and fire and hail.’

In the third part of the poem, the poet sees the West Wind at work on the water, as he has seen its impress on earth
and sky. He sees it as in a vision troubling the water off the coast many miles to the Southward, rousing the tranquil
Mediterranean from his summer dreams. The speaker describes the wind as having woken up the Mediterranean sea
from a whole summer of peaceful rest. The sea, here, is also personified. It is lain, calm sea and still in the summer,
however, the West Wind has working Mediterranean and making the sea choppy randomly. Like a romantic person, the
sea is dreaming of the past happenings. The sea was dreaming of the old days of palaces and towers, and that he was
“quivering” at the memory of an “intenser day”. It dreams of ancient palaces and towers reflected on its water. When
everything was overgrown with blue “moss and flowers”. These palaces and towers are covered with green grass,
mosses and flowers; they are very beautiful that they cannot be described. Then, the poet says that the Atlantic ocean
brakes itself into chasms for the west wind. And there are different types of marine plants in the Atlantic ocean hearing
the west wind sound and suddenly go with fear to harm themselves.

References:

Kapstein, I. (1936).“The Symbolism of the Wind and the Leaves in Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”

<http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp>

Donahuea, Luke. (2014). “Romantic Survival and Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind”.
<httpwww.tandfonline.com/loi/gerr20 >

Pancoast, Henry. (1920). “Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind” < info/about/policies/terms.jsp>