Ode to the West Wind

 

Introduction

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a major English Romantic poet known for his radical ideas and lyrical, imaginative verse. His works, like “Ozymandias” and “Prometheus Unbound” often explore themes of individualism, freedom, and the power of nature. Despite facing criticism during his life, Shelley is now regarded as one of the greatest poets in the English language.

It is a powerful Romantic poem that celebrates the transformative force of nature. The West Wind is portrayed as both a destroyer and preserver, symbolizing change, renewal, and revolution. Shelley uses the wind as a metaphor for his own desire for his ideas to spread and inspire change. The poem is known for its passionate tone and vivid imagery.

The text of the poem.

 

I

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 odours
plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art
moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver;
hear, oh hear!

II

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 aëry surge,

Like the bright hair
uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even
from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the
zenith’s height,

The locks of the
approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which
this closing night

Will be the 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: oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from
his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean,
where he lay,

Lull’d by the coil of
his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in
Baiae’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 gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil
themselves: oh hear!

IV

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 seem’d 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 thorns of
life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has
chain’d and bow’d

One too like thee: tameless,
and swift, and proud.

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 wither’d leaves to
quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of
this verse,

Scatter, as from an
unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words
among mankind!

Be through my lips to
unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy!
O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring
be far behind?

 

“Ode to the West Wind” is a poem by the English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. According to Shelley, the poem was written in the woods outside Florence, Italy in the autumn of 1819. In the poem, the speaker directly addresses the west wind. The speaker treats the west wind as a force of death and decay and welcomes this death and decay because it means that rejuvenation and rebirth will come soon. In the final two sections of the poem, the speaker suggests that he wants to help promote this rebirth through his own poetry—and that the rejuvenation he hopes to see is both political and poetic: a rebirth of society and its ways of writing. O rowdy west wind, you are the harbinger of fall. You are invisible and you scatter the fallen leaves. These leaves look like ghosts running away from a witch or wizard. The leaves are yellow, black, white and wild red. They look like a crowd of sick people. You carry the seeds, as if you are their chariot, down to the earth where they will sleep all winter. They lie there, cold and humble, like dead bodies in their graves until your blue sister, the spring wind, blows her trumpet and wakes up the earth. Then she brings out the buds. They are like flocks of sheep. They feed in the open air. She fills the meadows and the hills with sweet smells and beautiful colours. Rowdy west wind, moving everywhere, you are both a terminator and a saviour. Please listen to me!

2.

In the high and whirling spinning ranges of the sky, you make the clouds curl around. They look like dead leaves, shaken loose from the branches of the heavens and the sea. They are like angels, full of rain and lightning. They are scattered across the blue sky like the blond hair of a Dionysian follower dancing wildly. The clouds stretch from the horizon to the top of the sky like the hair of the coming storm. O wind, yo sing a sad song for the end of the year. The night sky will be like the dome of a vast tomb, the clouds you gathered like archways running across it. And from the solid top of that tomb, dark rain, lightning and hail will fall down. Listen to me!

3.

The west wind woke the Mediterranean from its summer dream. The blue sea, which lay wrapped in its crystal-clear currents, was snoozing near an island made of volcanic rock in the Bay of Baiae, near Naples. In the waters of the bay, you saw the ruins of old palaces and towers, now submerged in the water’s thicker form of daylight. These ruins were overgrown with sea plants that looked like blue moss and flowers. They are so beautiful that I faint when I think of them. You – whose path turns the smooth surface of the Atlantic Ocean into all waves, while deep below the surface sea-flowers and forests of seaweed, which have leaves with no sap, hear your voice and turn grey from fear, trembling, losing their flowers and leaves-listen to me, wind!

4.

If only I was a dead leaf, you might carry me. You might let me fly with you if I was a cloud. Or if I was a wave that you drive forward, I would share your strength, though I’d be less free than you, since no one can control you. If only I could be the way I was when I was a child, when I was your friend, wandering with you across the sky-then it did not seem crazy to imagine that I could be as fast as you are- then I would not have called out to you, in desperation. Please lift me like a wave, a leaf, or a cloud! I am falling into life’s sharp thorns and bleeding! Time has put me in shackles and diminished my pride, though I was once as proud, fast and unruly as you.

5.

Make me into your musical instrument, just as the forsest is when you blow through it. So what if my leaves are falling like the forest. The ruckus of your powerful music will bring a deep, autumn music out of both me and the forest. It will be beautiful though it’s sad. Unruly soul, you should become my soul. You should become me, you unpredictable creature. Scatter my dead thoughts across the universe like fallen leaves to inspire something new and exciting. Let this poem be a prayer that scatters ashes and sparks-as though from a fire that someone forgot to put out- throughout the human race. Speak through me, and in that way, turn my words into a prediction of the future. O wind, if winter is on its way, spring will be following soon.