Ode To The West Wind

- P.B Shelly
SUMMARY

Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his poem Ode To The West Wind, argues that death and decay are necessary
for transformation and rebirth. As a result, this breeze will eventually bring regeneration and resurrection.
The author begins the poem by praying to the autumn's wild west wind. He observes how the wind
scatter the dead leaves and spreads the seeds. As a result, they will be nurtured over the Spring season. Thus,
the poet describes the wind as both a destroyer and a preserver. He begs it to listen to him by explaining how
the wind is to blame for causing violent storms. 
He discusses the wind's remarkable powers and how it causes waves in vast oceans and seas such as
the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The poet appeals to the wind once more, hoping that it would
hear him.
The poet recalls his beautiful relationship with the west wind in his boyhood in Ode To The West
Wind. He wishes to be a dead leaf or a swift cloud, so that he can be carried by the west wind and feel its
power.
Finally, the poet asks the west wind to transform him into a lyre. As a result, his remarks can be
scattered around the world like a dead leaf for everyone to see. He also wants the wind to take on his form.
Finally, he closes by posing the question of whether, if winter arrives, spring will not be far behind.
As a result, he establishes a metaphor for both birth and death which can imply rebirth rather than the end.
Ode To The West Wind is a poem that shows us the power of the wind and how it affects the natural
world. Similarly, the poet wishes for social improvement. Furthermore, the poem contains underlying themes
of hope and optimism for a brighter future.
ANALYSIS
The poet is addressing the wind and everything it can do as it takes over the rest of nature and blows
across the land and through the seasons, capable of both preserving and destroying everything in its path.
Clouds, oceans, weather, and other things are all under the control of the wind. The poet claims that the
poem was inspired by the wind across the Mediterranean Sea. The wind becomes a metaphor for nature's
amazement spirit when its strength is recognised. The speaker has finally accepted the wind's control over
him in the final stanza, and he asks for inspiration and perspective. He prays that the wind will carry his
words over the land and through time, as it does with all other objects in nature, to support him in his poetic
endeavours.
The poem's structure follows a standard pattern. Each stanza has fourteen lines and follows the aba
bcb cdc ded ee rhyming pattern. This is known as terza rima, and it is the form that Dante utilised in his
Divine Comedy.
Given that this is an ode, a choral celebration, the speaker's tone is bound to be filled with
excitement, pleasure, joy, and hope. Shelley makes a comparison between the wind's seasonal cycles and his
own ever-changing soul. Nature, in the form of the wind, is depicted here as the outward parallel to an inner
movement from lethargy to spiritual energy, and from mental sterility to a burst of creative strength.
The poem's central theme is Shelley's reliance on nature for inspiration. Shelley's atheistic version of
the Christian Holy Spirit is the "breath of autumn being." Rather than relying on traditional religion, Shelley
emphasises the wind's role in nature's many cycles—death, regeneration, "preservation," and "destruction."
The speaker begins by praising the wind, personalising the huge natural spirit with anthropomorphic
techniques (winter bed, chariots, corpses, and clarions) in the hopes that it will listen his plea. The speaker is
conscious of his own extinction as well as his subject's immortality. This causes him to ask to be inspired
("make me thy lyre") and conveyed ("be through my lips to the unawakened earth") beyond land and time.
 Ode To The West Wind
- P.B Shelly
The first two stanzas are simply praise for the wind's power, with simile and allusion to all the wind can do:
"loosen," "spread," "shed," and "burst." The speaker enters the poem in the fourth and fifth stanzas, wishing
for equal treatment with all other objects in nature, at least on the productive side. The poet expresses
humility in the hopes of reaching his purpose of driving [his] lifeless thoughts throughout the universe with
the help of the wind. Finally, the poet expresses gratitude for the inspiration he receives from nature's spirit,
and he hopes that the same spirit will carry his words across the nation, where he can also serve as a source of
inspiration.

THEMES

Throughout “Ode to the West Wind,” the speaker describes the West Wind as a powerful and
destructive force: it drives away the summer and brings instead winter storms, chaos, and even death. Yet the
speaker celebrates the West Wind and welcomes the destruction that it causes as it leads to renewal and
rebirth.
The West Wind is not peaceful or pleasant. It is, the speaker notes, “the breath of Autumn’s being.”
Autumn is a transitional season, when summer’s abundance begins to fade. The West Wind strips the leaves
from the trees, whips up the sky, and causes huge storms on the ocean.
Similarly, the clouds in the poem’s second section look like the “bright hair uplifted from the head /
of some fierce Mænad.” In Greek mythology, the Mænads were the female followers of Dionysus (the god of
Wine). They were famous for their wild parties and their dancing, and are often portrayed with their hair
askew. The West Wind thus makes the clouds wild and drunk. It creates chaos. Unlike its “sister of the
Spring”—which spreads sweet smells and beautiful flowers—the speaker associates the West Wind with
chaos and death.
Yet despite the destructive power of the West Wind the speaker celebrates it—because such
destruction is necessary for rebirth. As the speaker notes at the end of the poem’s first section, the West Wind
is both a “destroyer” and “preserver. The West Wind combines is able to merge these opposites because in
order to have the beautiful renewal and rebirth that Spring promises, one needs the powerful, destructive force
of the West Wind.
The speaker so admires the wind that he wants to take, adopt, or absorb the West Wind’s power’s
into his poetry because he wants to create something new, to clear away the old and the dead. Under the West
Wind’s influence, his or her “dead thoughts” will “quicken a new birth”—they will create something living
and new. The speaker doesn’t say exactly what new thing he hopes to create. It might be a new kind of poetry.
Or it might be a new society. (Indeed, many readers have interpreted the poem as a call for political change).
Either way, for the speaker, that newness can’t be achieved through compromise with the old and dead; it can
emerge only through the cleansing destruction that the West Wind brings.

SYMBOLISM

[Symbolism is a kind of special writing technique, and it can convey the author's inner feelings by
means of euphemism, so it needs the readers to think deeply in order to understand the purpose of the author's
suggestion.]
The use of symbols makes Ode to the West Wind unique and never forgotten by readers. The First
stanza of the poem describes the leaves flying before the wind, which is represented as both destroyer of the
leaves and preserver of the seeds from which new life will arise. As the first stanza reveals the power of the
wind over the earth, so the second and the third stanza reveals the power over the heavens and the waters. In
the fourth stanza the poet prays that he, like leaf, cloud, and the waver, may undergo the power of the wind in
 Ode To The West Wind
- P.B Shelly
order to achieve his own regeneration, and at the climax of the poem in the fifth stanza prays that from his
dead thoughts driven over the earth by the wind there will arise in the cycle of the seasons a regenerating
influence upon mankind.
Thus, the Wind, as the destroyer of the old order and preserver of the new, for Shelly, symbolized
Change or Mutability, which destroyes yet recreates all things; while the Leaves signified for him all things,
material and spiritual, ruled by Change. The poem epitomizes Shelly’s conception of the eternal cycle of life
and death and resurrection in the universe.
IMAGERY
Images drawn from nature abound in the poem. The changing aspects of the West Wind are
illustrated through a series of images. The most dominant image of the poem is the West Wind itself.
Throughout the poem, the West Wind remains an immense power that destroys the useless and nourishes the
useful.
In the poem, the images are constituted mainly by the use of figure of speech. Thus, the images of
leaves symbolically represent something beyond their usual meaning. The dry old leaves stand for old
and useless thoughts that barricade the inauguration of new and revolutionary ideas. The wind symbolically
representing a powerful force destroys the old, useless thoughts and preserves the new ideas represented by
‘winged seeds’. The image of the ‘winged-seeds’ implies the expectant social order beneficial to the
mankind.
The second stanza, with the onset of the winter storms, produces images of violence, destruction
and possession. The wind disrupts the usual order in a ‘commotion’ with ‘tangle boughs of Heaven and
Ocean’ and the demonic figure of the Maenad is threatening. The dirge and vast sepulcher of this stanza are
replaced in the third stanza by the images of clear water, light, balmy winds and a state of trance.
Other powerful images in the poem are image of thorns —representing the hardships in life. The image of
ghosts and enchanter appear early in the poem. The wind is compared with an enchanter and the decayed
leaves with ghosts that run away from an enchanter out of fear.
Shelley drew his images mainly from nature. He always had a keen eye for the moving objects in
nature. His images are mainly kinaesthetic in nature. The images, in conjunction with the figures of speech,
mould the meaning of the poem
STRUCTURE
Ode to the West Wind consists of five sections (cantos) written in terza rima. Each section consists
of four tercets (ABA, BCB, CDC, DED) and a rhyming couplet (EE). The ode is written in iambic
pentameter.
The poem starts with three sections that describe the impact of the wind on the earth, air, and water.
In the final two sections, the poet addresses the wind directly, pleading with it to raise him up and make him
a companion in its travels. The poem concludes on a positive note, stating that if winter days are here, spring
is not far away.