ODE OF THE WEST

WIND
by:
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Harriet Westbrook a pupil at the same

boarding schoolas Shelley's sisters, whom his
father had forbidden him to see.
Shelley was increasingly unhappy in his
marriage to Harriet and accused Harriet of
having married him for his money.
Harriets second child with Shelley, Charles, was
born in November of 1814.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of
Shelleys beloved mentor, William Godwin, and
Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist author
ofA Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Three months later, Mary gave birth to a girl.
The infant died just a few weeks later. In 1816,
Mary gave birth to their son, William.

STANZA 1

Addressing the west wind as a human, the poet

describes its activities: It drives dead leaves away
as if they were ghosts fleeing a wizard. The
leaves are yellow and black, pale and red, as if
they had died of an infectious disease. The west
wind carries seeds in its chariot and deposits
them in the earth, where they lie until the spring
wind awakens them by blowing on a trumpet
(clarion). When they form buds, the spring wind
spreads them over plains and on hills. In a
paradox, the poet addresses the west wind as a
destroyer and a preserver, then asks it to listen to
what he says.

STANZA 2

The poet says the west wind drives clouds along

just as it does dead leaves after it shakes the
clouds free of the sky and the oceans. These
clouds erupt with rain and lightning. Against the
sky, the lightning appears as a bright shaft of hair
from the head of a Mnad. The poet compares
the west wind to a funeral song sung at the death
of a year and says the night will become a dome
erected over the year's tomb with all of the wind's
gathered might. From that dome will come black
rain, fire, and hail. Again the poet asks the west
wind to continue to listen to what he has to say.

STANZA 3

At the beginning of autumn, the poet says, the the west wind
awakened the Mediterranean Sealulled by the sound of the
clear streams flowing into itfrom summer slumber near an
island formed from pumice (hardened lava). The island is in a
bay at Baiae, a city in western Italy about ten miles west of
Naples. While sleeping at this locale, the Mediterranean saw
old palaces and towers that had collapsed into the sea during
an earthquake and became overgrown with moss and
flowers. To create a path for the west wind, the powers of the
mighty Atlantic Ocean divide (cleave) themselves and flow
through chasms. Deep beneath the ocean surface, flowers
and foliage, upon hearing the west wind, quake in fear and
despoil themselves. (In autumn, ocean plants decay like land
plants. See Shelley'snoteon this subject.) Once more, the
poet asks the west wind to continue to listen to what he has
to say.

STANZA 4

The poet says that if he were a dead leaf (like the ones in
the first stanza) or a cloud (like the ones in the second
stanza) or an ocean wave that rides the power of the
Atlantic but is less free than the uncontrollable west wind
or if even he were as strong and vigorous as he was when
he was a boy and could accompany the wandering wind in
the heavens and could only dream of traveling fasterwell,
then, he would never have prayed to the west wind as he is
doing now in his hour of need.
.......Referring again to imagery in the first three stanzas,
the poet asks the wind to lift him as it would a wave, a leaf,
or a cloud; for here on earth he is experiencing troubles
that prick him like thorns and cause him to bleed. He is now
carrying a heavy burden thatthough he is proud and
tameless and swift like the west windhas immobilized him
in chains and bowed him down.

STANZA 5

The poet asks the west wind to turn him into a lyre (a
stringed instrument) in the same way that the west wind's
mighty currents turn the forest into a lyre. And if the poet's
leaves blow in the wind like those from the forest trees,
there will be heard a deep autumnal tone that is both sweet
and sad. Be "my spirit," the poet implores the wind. "Be
thou me" and drive my dead thoughts (like the dead
leaves) across the universe in order to prepare the way for
new birth in the spring. The poet asks the wind to scatter
his words around the world, as if they were ashes from a
burning fire. To the unawakened earth, they will become
blasts from a trumpet of prophecy. In other words, the poet
wants the wind to help him disseminate his views on
politics, philosophy, literature, and so on. The poet is
encouraged that, although winter will soon arrive, spring
and rebirth will follow it.

FIGURE OF SPEECH

Alliteration:wildWestWind(line 1).
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to a
forest (line 58).
Anastrophe: leaves dead(line 2)
Simile: Comparison of buds to flocks
(line 11).
Personification: Comparison of spring
wind to a person (lines 9-10).
Paradox: Destroyer and preserver (line
14).