"Ode to the West Wind" poem A Revolutionary Spirit

1. Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)

2. 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 wingèd 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 odours plain and hill—
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere—
Destroyer and Preserver—hear, O hear!

3. Romanticism seeks to effect in poetry a change that is summed up in:
“innovation, transformantion, defamiliarisation" (Divid Duff,p. 26) Revolution
is a dominant spirit in almost all the romantic poets. Shelley’s poem “Ode to
the West Wind”(1820) expresses his zeal for a revolution that could change
man and society . It was the influence of the French Revolution the triggered
the poetic spirit though Shelley new about the revolution through reading only
unlike Wordsworth.
He therefore selected the Wind as a symbol of the change that he wished for
his country while living in Italy.
According to Shelley's note, "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
lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions" (188). Florence was the
home of Dante Alighieri, creator of terza rima, the form of his Divine
Comedy. Zephyrus was the west wind, son of Astrœus and Aurora.

4. The Defence of Poetry" begins with the same metaphor as that in the
poem : Shelley writes that "Man is an instrument over which a series of external
and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing
wind over an Æolian lyre; which move it, by their motion, to ever-changing
melody” In the poem there is a request made by the poet wanting to become
the wind’s lyre.
In the same essay Shelley states that "the mind in creation is as a fading
coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to
transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower
which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our
natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure" (285)
The wind's tumultuous "mighty harmonies" (59) imprint their power and
patterns on the "leaves" they drive, both ones that fall from trees, and ones
known as “pages”, the leaves on which poems are written. Inspiration gives
the poet a melody, a sequence of simple notes, resembling the wind's "stream"
(15), but his creative mind imposes a new harmony of this melody, by adding
chords and by repeating and varying the main motifs.

5. Imagination
Symbolism
Metaphor
The human imagination actively works with this "wind" to impose
"harmony" on its melody. The lyre "accomodate[s] its chords to the
motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of
sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound
of the lyre" (§8). In this way, the poet's mind and the inspiration it
receives co-create the poem.
The Romantic poets made frequent use of the wind as a soothing
symbol. But in Shelley’s treatment it is not a “correspondent breeze”; it
is rather ferocious in its energy. M.H. Abrams says “because of the
ferocity the wind becomes a vast impersonal force, which the poet
needs as a symbol of both destruction and creation”. Herein lies the
importance of the wind as the metaphor for revolutionary social
change.
The poem directly conforms to Shelley’s poetic creed. Poetry, Shelley
writes in “A Defence of Poetry”, “…awakens and enlarges the mind by
rendering it the receptable of a thousand unapprehended combination
of thought. Poetry lifts its veil from the hidden beauty of the world.”

6. Transcendence Sublime
In "Ode on the West Wind," the `melody' delivered to Shelley is unconsciously expressed
in the poem's epic metaphor. In "The Defence of Poetry," Shelley explains that poets'
"language is vitally metaphorical; that is it marks the before unapprehended relations of
things" (22). He therefore builds his poem on "unapprehended relations" between the
poetic mind and the west wind. The experience in the Arno forest awoke his mind to
these relations.
• In the poem Shelley tries to gain transcendence, for he shows that his thoughts, like the
"winged seeds" (7) are trapped.
• The West Wind acts as a driving force for change and rejuvenation in the human and
natural world, a revolution.
• Shelley can only reach his sublime by having the wind carry his "dead thoughts" (63)
which through an apocalyptic destruction, will lead to a rejuvenation of the imagination,
the individual and the natural world.
•The poem consists of five cantos written in terza rima. Each canto consists of four
tercets (ABA, BCB, CDC, DED) and a rhyming couplet (EE). The Ode is written in iambic
pentameter.

7. The opening three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over land, in the sky,
and under the ocean, and beg it to "hear" the poet (14, 28, 42).
In the first stanza, the power of the wind is delineated over the earth, the wind as
"Destroyer and preserver" (14) drives "dead leaves" and "winged seeds" to the former's
burial and the latter's spring rebirth. Though the theme of death is provoked yet the
word "seeds” shows that even in death, new life will grow out of the "grave." The West
Wind moves with a terrific force and makes massacre of all that stand in its way. But it
takes care to preserve the seeds under the soil so as to ensure a resurrection in the world
of nature with the advent of the spring. In this way, the West Wind becomes both a
“destroyer and preserver”. Heavenly images are confirmed by his use of the word
"azure" which besides meaning sky blue, also is defined, in Webster's Dictionary, as an
"unclouded vault of heaven." The word "azure," coupled with the word "Spring," helps
show Shelley's view of rejuvenation. The word "Spring" besides being a literary
metaphor for rebirth also means to rise up. Shelley was against capitalism and defended
the rights of labor against their exploiters.
The second and third stanzas extend the leaf image.

8. In the second stanza the power of the wind is over the sky :The sky's clouds in
the second stanza are like "earth's decaying leaves" (17) and "Angels of rain
and lightning" (18), a phrase that fuses the guardian and the killer. The clouds
extend the image of the leaves in the first stanza.
Here Shelley compares the clouds ravaged by the power of the wind to the
uplifted hair of a Maenad(mythological figure) in order to convey the sense
that the West Wind operates possessed by some supernatural force.
In the third stanza, the wind penetrates to the Atlantic's depths (the sea) and
causes the sea flowers and "oozy woods" to "despoil themselves" (40, 42), that
is, to shed the "sapless foliage of the ocean," sea-leaves. The forests implicit in
the opening stanza, in this way, become "the tangled boughs of Heaven and
Ocean" in the second, and "oozy woods" in the third.

9. Idealism
The last two stanzas shift from nature's forests to Shelley's.
The fourth stanza, begins, by briefly recapitulating the themes of the first
three movements. Now, the Wind is seen in the fourth stanza in relation to
the poet himself:
“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”
As an idealist and as an extremely sensitive soul, Shelley was in much
distress to see mankind exploited and being dehumanized by the corrupt,
degenerate and old political powers and institutions. He identifies himself
with the leaves of the first three stanzas: "dead leaf," "swift cloud," and
"wave." If the wind can lift these things into flight, why can it not also lift
Shelley "as a wave, a leaf, a cloud" (43-45, 53)? The stanza is therefore a
transitional one that converts the threefold command "hear" to "lift" (53).

10. The Spirit
The fifth stanza completes the metaphor by identifying Shelley's "falling"
and "withered" leaves (58, 64) as his "dead thoughts" and "words" (63,
67). At last Shelley -- in longing to be the West Wind's lyre -- becomes one
with "the forest" (57).
The last two stanzas also bring Shelley's commands to the invoked West
Wind to a climax. While the fourth “lifts” the last multiplies the
commands six-fold: "Make me thy lyre" (57), "Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My
Spirit" and "Be thou me" (61-62), "Drive my dead thoughts" (63), "Scatter
... / Ashes and sparks" (66), and "Be ... / The trumpet of a prophecy" (68).
The poem is an optimistic one that tries to overcome the limitations of
man’s knowledge and language. Poetic language holds prophetic,
revolutionary promise. It is the Spirit of change and rebirth.
The spirit is also metaphoric of the poet’s own Psych , the psychological
inner dimension around which the poem rotates.
Wordsworth's "correspondent breeze"--inspiration from nature has
directed Shelley to his choice where he selects the words and images that
sound the trumpet of a prophecy, not the prophecy itself. Spring is coming

11. Mythology
In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of
Dionysus. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Often the
maenads were portrayed as inspired into a state of ecstatic frenzy,
through a combination of dancing . In this state, they would lose all self-
control, begin shouting excitedly, engage in uncontrolled sexual behavior,
and hunt down and tear to pieces animals — and, in myth at least,
sometimes men and children — devouring the raw flesh. During these
rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a long stick
wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped by a cluster of leaves; they would
weave ivy-wreaths around their heads, and often handle or wear snakes.
The often symbolize madness.
Psych has another name which is Spirit, she was the most beautiful lady
who was married to Eros and then changed to an immortal. Her suffering
and beauty symbolize the inner mind of man.