Shelley: Ode to the West Wind

Ø  Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Broadbridge Heath, near Horsham, West Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a Whig Member of Parliament and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold a Sussex landowner.

Ø  In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, where he fared poorly and was subjected to an almost daily mob torment at around noon by older boys, who aptly called these incidents “Shelley-baits”.

Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for anonymously publishing a pamphlet titled “The Necessity of Atheism.”

Ø  Shelley eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook.

Ø  He did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death.

Ø  His literary circle included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and Mary Shelley.

Ø  His verse drama: The Cenci (1819)

Ø  Inspired by the death of Keats in 1821, Shelley wrote the elegy Adonais.

Ø William Godwin, the philosopher, was his father-in-law. 

Ø  On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia while returning from Leghorn (Livorno) to Lerici in his sailing boat, the Don Juan.

Ø  He was cremated on the beach near Viareggio.

Ø  In Shelley’s pocket was a small book of Keats’ poetry.

Ø  He was in favour of Vegetarianism

Ø  He supported Nonviolence

Ø  He propagated Social justice for the lower/working class in his writings

Ø  “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Defence of Poetry

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 airy 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?

·       It was initially published in 1820 by Charles and James Ollier in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound.

·       Here we have the image of the poet as the poet-prophet figure

·       The poem allegorises the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution.

·       The poem “Ode to the West Wind” directly conforms to Shelley’s poetic creed: “[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.” “A Defence of Poetry”

· 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”.

·       The wind is the metaphor for revolutionary social change

·       Shelley’s love of enjambment (continuing the sense of a line onto the next line)

·       Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. Terza nina is a series of triplets with interlocking rhymes, aba, bcb, cdc, etc.

·       It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in Divina Commedia

·       The first English poet to write in terza rima was Geoffrey Chaucer

·       The poem “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.

·       Shelley modified the pattern by ending each of the five sections of the poem with a climactic couplet.

·       In keeping with his terza rima stanza, he concentrates on the effects of the west wind on three classes of objects: leaves, clouds, and water.

·       The combination of terza rima and the threefold effect of the west wind gives the poem a pleasing structural symmetry.

·       Shelley wrote: “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.”

The Romantic poets frequently used the wind as a symbol of soothing. 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 a metaphor for revolutionary social change.

In the very first stanza, West Wind appears with an accumulated force–a “breath of Autumn’s being”—to blow away the dead leaves. Shelley compares the West Wind to a magician because, just as a powerful magician drives away ghosts, the wind performs the same kind of operation by sweeping away the dead things in autumnal nature while remaining invisible. The phrase “pestilence-stricken multitude” here, on the surface level, refers to the leaves, which are decomposing on the ground. But symbolically, the ‘multitudes’ refers to the entire human society, which, the poet thinks, is in a state of degeneration.

“…O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wing’d seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave.”

The West Wind carries the seeds with wing-like devices down to the ground, where they remain dormant. During spring, however, when Zephyr, the gentle and warm wind, blows across the land, the seeds shooting forth from the ground will grow into plants. Here, Shelley seems to have a very swift vision of the spring. He sees that just as with the onset of spring, shepherds go out with their flocks of sheep to tend on the green fields; the gentle breeze similarly causes the buds to bloom and carry their fragrances from one place to another. The West Wind moves with a terrific force and makes a massacre of all that stands 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 spring. In this way, the West Wind becomes both a “destroyer and preserver”.

In the second stanza, the wind changes its field of operation; it is set in the air, in the “steep sky”. The West Wind, while operating in the sky, moves along with all its might, Shelley imagines, just as the stream of a river. In so doing it forces accumulated clouds—right from the surface of the ocean up to the sky—to disintegrate. The Wind performs this kind of function by forcing the clouds to—just as the leaves of the trees fall off. Shelley may be referring to the scientific fact that clouds are formed in the sky through the evaporation of water from the surface of Earth’s water bodies. But in the immediate context of the poem, he must have observed that the clouds had accumulated right from the surface of the ocean up to the great heights of the sky. That is why he imagines the clouds as the interconnected boughs of the sea and the sky. Shelley compares the clouds ravaged by the power of the wind to the uplifted hair of a Maenad to convey the sense that the West Wind operates with a supernatural force.

In the European seasonal cycle, autumn is the season that precedes winter, marking the end of the year. So, before the coming of winter, the West Wind passes over the earth, destroying the old, degenerate things and making horrible sounds. The howling of the wind is, therefore, imagined by the poet to be the dirge or the funeral song for the closing year. Shelley here addresses the clouds, accumulated from the surface of the ocean up to the great heights of the sky, as “angels of rain and lightning” because they obviously indicate that rain and lightning are approaching soon.

By the expression “the dome of a vast sepulchre,” Shelley here refers to the closing night, which will serve as the dome of a vast tomb, in which the closing year will be buried. The accumulated water vapors also make the roof over the dying year and the atmosphere seems to be solid because of thick layers of dense clouds. The point is that Wind operates with a single, unified agenda: it destroys the dead and preserves the living.

In the third stanza, the realm of the ruling West Wind is the sea, both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and both the surface and the vegetation beneath. Shelley here has personified the Mediterranean, which perhaps in its sleep is dreaming of the destruction of the palaces. During the summer, the Mediterranean and the Roman palaces and towers, which remain submerged, are all quiet, as if they seem to be sleeping, because no storms appear to ruffle the surface of the sea in that season. But the wind agitates the sea and the palaces seem to quiver on account of the tremendous motion of the waves. This may be easily interpreted as allusions to Shelley’s hope for political change in Italy, specifically the collapse of the kings and kingdoms. Shelley here must have tried to bring home a political philosophy. The old palaces and towers symbolize corrupt, degenerate, and old power, old order, and institutions. All these should be destroyed, the poet dreams along with the sea, in order to make way for a new beginning.

As the scene shifts to the Atlantic, “the somnolent summer yields to the ruthless autumn”. The reader is taken not only to the Atlantic, where its smooth surface has turned into deep waves, but under it, where woods and foliage are forced to dispossess themselves of foliage upon hearing the Wind’s voice.

The fourth stanza begins, as pointed out by Michael Ferver, somewhat the way Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” 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 nawaket bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee.”

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 wanted to see mankind reach an ideal state of life based on fraternity, equality and democracy. And that is why he was seeking revolution, which he refers to as his “sore need”. Shelley erupts in Romantic agony,

“Oh! Lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

The poet aims to convey the message of revolution to humanity. But he knows that he lacks the energy to do so. In order to acquire the strength and speed of the West Wind, he wants to be a piece of cloud, a leaf and a wave. The poet now remembers that in his boyhood he was full of energy and vigor, and as such, he would not refrain from competing with the cloudlets borne away in the sky by the wind. But now he lacks the energy to do so and that is why he seeks to be invaded by the fierce wind so that he may be supplied with energy and inspiration. Again, Shelley here thinks of himself as having accumulated the degenerate habits and ideas. To be refreshed and reinvigorated, the poet invites or instead prays to the Wind to invade his self. He wants this also with the intention of acquiring some of the fierce energy of the wind in this process. The West Wind emerges in autumn, fulfilling its predestined role of destroying the old and degenerate, thereby paving the way for the new. As it is destructive, its processes are bound to have certain sad implications. But destruction is also a necessary prelude to a new awakening, which implies sweetness.

He longs to be invaded by the fierce spirit of the Wind and cleaves with it to become,

“…through my lips to awake’d earth

The trumpet of my prophecy!”

At last, he is optimistic about the future and closes the poem with a prophecy:

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

It becomes clear that the poet invokes the example of the operations of the west wind in nature because, in turn, he wants to spread his message of resurrection through this poem and other poems he plans to compose. In other words, evidence of a natural phenomenon in nature turns out to be a poetic inspiration for him.

Shelley compares the West Wind to a magician because, just as a powerful magician drives away ghosts, the wind performs a similar operation by sweeping away the dead things in autumnal nature while remaining invisible.

2. Why does Shelley address the Wind as “the breath of Autumn’s being”?

Shelley imagines the West Wind here as a restless, anthropomorphizing force, a spirit that comes into being as a result of special climatic conditions during the autumn season.

Who are referred to as “pestilence-stricken multitude”?

The phrase, on the surface level, refers to the leaves that are decomposing on the ground. But symbolically, the ‘multitudes’ refers to the entire human society, which, the poet thinks, is in a state of degeneration.

3. “Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air”—Explain the expression.

With the onset of spring, shepherds go out with their flocks of sheep to tend in the green fields. The gentle breeze, similarly, the poet imagines, causes the buds to bloom and carry the fragrances from one place to another.

4. What is referred to here as “azure sister of the spring”? What is its significance in relation to the West Wind?

The West Wind carries the seeds with wing-like devices down to the ground, where they remain dormant. During spring, however, when Zephyr, the gentle and warm wind, blows across the land, the seeds shooting forth from the ground will grow into plants.

5. Why is the West Wind called “destroyer and preserver”?

The West Wind moves with a terrific force and makes a massacre of all that stands 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 spring. In this way, the West Wind becomes both a “destroyer and preserver”.

6. Explain the expression “winged seeds”.

Ans: Certain plants and trees in nature produce seeds which are formed in such a physical condition that they may be transported by the wind from one place to another. The plants and trees employ this natural device to perpetuate their lines over a wide area of land. Shelley suggests that the West Wind performs just this function in nature.

7. How does Shelley equate “Loose clouds” with “earth’s decaying leaves”?

The West Wind, while operating in the sky, moves along with all its might, Shelley imagines, just as the stream of a river. In so doing it forces accumulated clouds—right from the surface of the ocean up to the sky—to disintegrate. The Wind performs this kind of function by forcing the clouds to—just as the leaves of the trees fall off.

8. Explain the expression “…tangled boughs of heaven and ocean”.

Ans: Shelley may be referring to the scientific fact that clouds are formed in the sky through the evaporation of water from the surface of Earth’s water bodies. But in the immediate context of the poem, he must have observed that the clouds had accumulated right from the surface of the ocean up to the great heights of the sky. That is why he imagines the clouds as the interconnected boughs of the sea and the sky.

9. Who is a Maenad? Why does Shelley compare the clouds to the uplifted hair of a Maenad?

Ans: Maenad is a frenzied woman-worshipper of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine. Shelley compares the clouds ravaged by the power of the wind to the uplifted hair of a Maenad in order to convey the sense that the West Wind operates possessed by some supernatural force.

10. Why does Shelley call the West Wind, “dirge of the dying year”?

Ans: In the European seasonal cycle, autumn is the season that stands just before winter, at the end of which the year closes. So, before the coming of winter, the West Wind passes over the earth, destroying the old, degenerate things and making horrible sounds. The howling of the wind is, therefore, imagined by the poet to be the dirge or the funeral song for the closing year.

11. Whom does Shelley address as “angels of rain and lightning” and why?

Ans: Shelley addresses the clouds, which accumulate from the ocean’s surface to the great heights of the sky, as “angels of rain and lightning” because they clearly indicate that rain and lightning are approaching soon.

12. What does Shelley refer to as “the dome of a vast sepulchre”?

Ans: By the expression, Shelley here refers to the closing night, which will serve as the dome of a vast tomb, in which the closing year will be buried. The accumulated water vapours also make the roof over the dying year and the atmosphere seems to be solid because of thick layers of dense clouds.

13. How does Shelley personify “the Mediterranean”?

Ans: During summer, the Mediterranean and the Roman palaces and the towers, which remain submerged, are all quiet as if they seem to be sleeping because no storms appear to ruffle the surface of the sea in that season. But the wind agitates the sea and the palaces seem to quiver on account of the tremendous motion of the waves.

14. Explain the line: “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”.

Ans: At the very end of the fourth stanza of the poem “Ode to the West Wind” Shelley refers to the troubles, sorrows and the bitter disappointment of life which are inevitable to every human being. Shelley was no exception to it. More importantly, as he was an idealist and Romantic, he was deeply hurt by the bitter experiences of life.

15. Where is Baiae’s Bay?

Ans: The Baiae’s Bay is situated on the western coast of Italy near Naples. Vesuvius stands close to the Bay. The Bay is famous for islands formed from the deposit of lava.

16. What is the significance of the phrase “old palaces and towers quivering”?

Ans: Shelley here must have attempted to convey a political philosophy. The old palaces and towers symbolise corrupt, degenerate and old power, old order and institutions. All these should be destroyed, the poet dreams along with the sea, to make way for new beginning.

17. What does the poet refer to as “sore need”

Ans: As an idealist and as an extremely sensitive soul, Shelley was in much distress to see mankind exploited and being dehumanised by the corrupt, degenerate and old political powers and institutions. He wanted to see mankind reach an ideal state of life based on fraternity, equality and democracy. And that is why he was seeking revolution, which he refers to as his “sore need”.

18. “If even I were in my boyhood…seemed a vision”

Ans: The poet now remembers that in his boyhood he was full of energy and vigour, and as such that he would not refrain himself from competing with the cloudlets borne away in the sky by the wind. But now he lacks the energy to do so and that is why he seeks to be invaded by the fierce wind so that he may be supplied with energy and inspiration. (The expression “scare seemed a vision” means it did not seem impossible in his boyhood.)

19. Why does the poet wish to be “a dead leaf”, “a swift cloud” and “a wave”?

Or, Why does the poet wish to “share the impulse of thy strength”?

Ans: The poet wants to preach the words of revolution to mankind. But he knows that lacks the energy to do so. In order to acquire the strength and speed of the West Wind, he wants to be a piece of cloud, a leaf and a wave.

20. “Make me thy lyre”—Explain.

Ans: Shelley, in the poem Ode to the West Wind, thinks of himself as having accumulated degenerate habits and ideas. To be refreshed and reinvigorated, the poet invites, or rather prays to, the Wind to invade his self. He wants this also with the intention of acquiring some of the fierce energy of the wind in this process.

21. “The tumult of thy mighty harmonies/Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone

Sweet though in sadness—”

Why does Shelley say this? How can sweetness remain side by side sadness?

Ans: The West Wind, the poet thinks, comes into being during autumn with its predestined function of destroying the old and degenerate, thereby paving the way for the new. As it is destructive, its processes are bound to have specific sad implications. But destruction is also a necessary prelude to a new awakening, which implies sweetness.

22. What does Shelley want to mean by “Thy mighty harmonies”?

Ans: The West Wind, as it blows across the world, produces horrible sounds. The poet takes it for granted that the wind possesses a pattern of its operation, like a musical composition. But since it is destructive in nature, its sounds are horrible.

23. “Drive my dead thoughts…my words among mankind”—Explain.

Ans: Towards the end of the poem “Ode to the West Wind”, it becomes clear that the poet invokes the example of the operations of the west wind in nature because, in turn, he wants to spread his message of resurrection through this poem and other poems he plans to compose. In other words, an evidence of a natural phenomenon in nature turns out to be a poetic inspiration for him.

A.     Apostrophe

B.    Personification

C.    Metaphor

D.   Address

A.    Allegory

B.     Metaphor

C.    Metonymy

D.   Apostrophe

A.     Wind as visible expression of the abstract and intangible Nature

B.    Wind as the correspondent breeze

C.    Wind as spirit of revolution

D.   Wind as messenger

A.    Secular

B.     Religious

C.    Mythical

D.   Natural

A.     The degenerate human society

B.    The Italian people

C.    The English people

D.   Rotten vegetation

A.    The colour of the trees

B.     The colour of the autumnal leaves

C.    The colour of the autumnal ground

D.   NOTA

A. Just as with the onset of spring, shepherds go out with their flocks of sheep for tending on the green field, the gentle breeze, similarly, the poet imagines, causes the buds to bloom and carry the fragrances from one place to another.

B.      Just as with the onset of spring shepherds go out with their flocks of sheep for tending on the green field, the west wind similarly, the poet imagines, causes the buds to bloom and carry the fragrances from one place to another.

C.     Just as with the onset of spring, shepherds go out with their flocks of sheep for tending on the green field, the buds bloom and carry the fragrances from one place to another.

D.    AOTA

A.    The west wind

B.    The spring wind

C.     The poet himself

D.   NOTA

9.     ‘Enchanter’ means?

10.   “winged seeds” refers to

A.    Seeds flying because of the wind

B.     Seeds having wing-like devices to move from one place to another

C.    Butterfly seeds

D.   NOTA

11.    “Thine azure sister of the Spring”. Azure refers to

A.     The clear blue of the cloudless sky of Spring

B.    The blue colour of the wind

C.    Name of a mythological goddess from the Greek pantheon

D.   The blue mist of the spring

A.     The pastoral trumpet call of the shepherd

B.    A call for war

C.    A call for social change

D.   NOTA

A.    Synecdoche

B.     Metaphor

C.    Allusion

D.   Simile

A.     Bright and cheerful hues after the drabness and death of Winter

B.    The hues of the shepherd

C.    The hues of the flowers

D.   NOTA

A.     Hindu mythology of three principal gods: Siva (Destroyer), Brahma (Creator) and Vishnu (Preserver)

B.    Christian mythology of the trinity

C.    The apocalypse of Christian mythology

D.   The Greek myth of creation and preservation

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean”. What is the thing the poet is referring to?

A.     Clouds

B.    Rains

C.    Thunder

D.   AOTA

A. The powerful spectacle of fractocumulus turbulence, which brings air (Heaven) and water (Ocean) together as one powerful force.

B.    Clouds are born out of vapor

C.    The clouds are imagined as waves

D.   The wind is imagined as waves

A.     The clouds accumulated right from the surface of the ocean up to the great heights of the sky.

B.    Corruption on all stages of society

C.    Black and white clouds lit up by thunder

D.   NOTA

A.    Refrain

B.    Rondo

C.    Apostrophe

D.   Metaphor

A. The old palaces and towers symbolise corrupt, degenerate, and old power, old order, and institutions.

B.    They are destroyed by the wind

C.    They are the sources of corruption

D.   They are symbols of anarchy

A.      The journey of the West Wind from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, leading to the spread of the message eastwards.

B.      The power of Europe to produce big ideas

C.       The Atlantic representing Europe, the corrupt continent

D.      The spread of justice through revolution

A.    Apostrophe

B.    Metaphor

C.     Invocation

D.   Exhortation

A resort in Italy that was fashionable in the 19th century. In fact, Baiae’s bay contains visible Roman ruins underwater.

A.     The mention of the season alludes to the transition between seasons, symbolizing death and rebirth

B.    The season refers to the future

C.    The season is symbolic here

D.   NOTA

A.    Clouds seen and perceived against the background of sky

B.    Clouds on the sky

C.    The moving sky along the cloud

D.   NOTA

A.     Enjambment

B.    Ungrammatical expression

C.    Classical style

D.   Ode