Ode to the West Wind
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 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 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 colors. 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 round. 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 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 suurgace 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 gray 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 up 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, juust 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.
Death and Rebirth
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 because 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. So too, everywhere the speaker looks
the West Wind drives away peace and abundance. The West Wind strips the leaves
from the trees, whips up the sky, and causes huge storms on the ocean. And, in
the first section of the poem, the speaker compares the dead leaves the West
Wind blows to “ghosts” and “pestilence-stricken multitudes.” The West Wind
turns the fall colors into something scary, associated with sickness and death.
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.” These are the traditional names of two Hindu gods,
Shiva and Vishnu. Vishnu’s role is to preserve the world; Shiva is supposed to
destroy it. The West Wind combines these two opposite figures. As the speaker
announces in the final lines—"O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far
behind?"—the West Wind is able to merge these opposites because death is
required for life, and winter for Spring. In order to have the beautiful
renewal and rebirth that Spring promises, one needs the powerful, destructive
force of the West Wind.
Poetry and Rebirth
Throughout "Ode to the West Wind," the speaker
praises and celebrates the West Wind’s power—it is destructive, chaotic—and yet
such destruction is necessary for rebirth and renewal. Indeed, the speaker so
admires the wind that he wants to take, adopt, or absorb the West Wind’s
power’s into his poetry.
The speaker describes himself as a diminished person: he
is “chained and bowed.” Far from condemning the destructive power of the wind,
the speaker hopes the West Wind will revive him. At different points in the
poem, the speaker has different ideas about what this might look like. Most
simply, the wind simply becomes the speaker, or becomes part of him. “Be thou
me,” the speaker tells the wind.
But the speaker also proposes more complicated
interactions between himself and the wind. At one point, he asks the Wind, to
“make me thy lyre, even as the forest is.” In other words he wants to be a
musical instrument, specifically the lyre, the musical instrument that poets
traditionally play while they perform their poems. In this scheme, the speaker
helps the wind—he’s like a musical accompaniment to it. The speaker doesn’t
take an active role, the wind does. (These roles are reinforced later when the
speaker imagines the Wind “driv[ing] my dead thoughts over the universe”—it
certainly seems that the Wind is doing the real work).
The speaker wants to be (or to help) the
West Wind 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.
Death and Rebirth
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 because 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. So too, everywhere the speaker looks
the West Wind drives away peace and abundance. The West Wind strips the leaves
from the trees, whips up the sky, and causes huge storms on the ocean. And, in
the first section of the poem, the speaker compares the dead leaves the West
Wind blows to “ghosts” and “pestilence-stricken multitudes.” The West Wind
turns the fall colors into something scary, associated with sickness and death.
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.” These are the traditional names of two Hindu gods,
Shiva and Vishnu. Vishnu’s role is to preserve the world; Shiva is supposed to
destroy it. The West Wind combines these two opposite figures. As the speaker
announces in the final lines—"O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far
behind?"—the West Wind is able to merge these opposites because death is
required for life, and winter for Spring. In order to have the beautiful
renewal and rebirth that Spring promises, one needs the powerful, destructive
force of the West Wind.
Shelley’s
revolutionary attitude is constructive in the long run. In his preface to “The
Revolt of Islam”, he points out that he wants to kindle in the bossom of his
readers a virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice; faith and hope in
something good, which neither violence nor prejudice can ever wholly
extinguish. As a poet, Shelley conceived to become the inspirer and judge of
men. He had a passion for reforming the world which was the direct outcome of
that attitude of mind which the French Revolution had inculcated in him.
Another idea contained in the original conception of the Revolution was ‘The
Return to Nature’. It held that the essential happiness of man consisted in a
simple life in accordance with Nature.
In the
"Ode to The West Wind" Shelley is seen as a rebel who wants
revolution. He desires a social change and the West Wind is his symbol of
change. This poem, in iambic pentameter, was written by the poet under the
direct influence of his time. The moral, social and political regeneration
seemed to Shelley possible in the atmosphere of Nature. Finding his life
miserable, he implores the wind:
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 chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Shelley’s
revolutionary passion flows from his idealism. All his life he dreamed of an
ideal world without evil, suffering and misery. It would be a world where
reason would rule supreme, and Equality, Liberty and Fraternity wound be no
empty words. “Ode to West Wind” expresses the poet’s intense suffering at the
tyranny of life and his great hope in the bright future of humanity. The poem
symbolizes three things; freedom, power and change. Thus the poet finds the
“West Wind” a fit symbol to raise and enliven his spirit out of the depths of
desolation, dejection and weariness. Moreover the ‘Wind’ should scatter his
thoughts among the universe:
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/Like withered leaves to quicken a
new birth!/
…/Scatter, …/… my words among mankind!
In
Shelley’s poetry, the figure of the poet is a grand, tragic, prophetic hero.
His poetry becomes a kind of prophecy, and through his words, a poet has the
ability to change the world for the better and to bring about political,
social, and spiritual change. Shelley’s poet is a near-divine saviour,
comparable to Christ, and to Prometheus, who stole divine fire and gave it to
humans in Greek mythology. The poet asks the west wind to “make me thy lyre,”
to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, “like
withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind to be the “trumpet
of a prophecy.”
It may
be said that the Revolution to Shelley was a spiritual awakening, the beginning
of a new life. He traced all evil in life to slavery. Free and natural
development is only possible when one enjoys liberty. And liberty in his
opinion was freedom from external restraints. Freedom was the first watchword
of the French Revolution. Thus the Revolution kindled the imaginative life of
Shelley as it did that of Wordsworth. But the fire in Wordsworth extinguished
before long; whereas in Shelley it kept burning all through his brief career
and permeated all through his poetic work.
Seeds
In lines 6-7, the speaker describes how the West Wind
carries “winged seeds” to their “dark wintry bed.” In other words, the wind
knocks loose seeds from the plants holding them, and carries the seeds to the
ground, where they lie all winter. This is something that really happens in the
fall—and the speaker is, partially, describing literal seeds involved in an
actual natural process.
But the seeds also play a symbolic role in the poem. They
symbolize the possibility of rebirth and renewal. As the speaker notes in the
next few lines, as soon as spring comes, the seeds sprout, producing “sweet
buds” and “living hues and odours.” If the seeds are like “corpse[s]” in their
“grave[s],” then their rebirth in the Spring is something like resurrection.
(Shelley was, famously, an atheist, and so this image of resurrection is
notably secular: instead of involving God, he portrays it as an entirely
natural process). For all its destructive power, the West Wind plays an
important role in bringing about that rebirth and renewal: without it, the
seeds would never get to the ground and start growing. In this way, the West
Wind earns the title the speaker gives it later in the poem: it is both
a “destroyer” and a “preserver.”
Flocks
In line 11, the speaker describes the Spring wind “driving
sweet buds like flocks to feed in air.” In other words, the wind is like a
shepherd; it helps bring out the buds of flowers in the same way a shepherd
drives their sheep, their “flocks,” to pasture.
This simile is already pretty complicated, and it’s made even more so
by the symbol in the middle of it, the “flocks.” “Flocks” of sheep are a
traditional symbol in poetry for innocence and beauty. In pastoral poetry—a
whole genre of poetry dedicated to talking about shepherds and sheep—the
presence of the "flock" often suggests that the shepherd is free from
politics and all the dirt and complication of life in the city. In this sense,
the “flocks” suggest an important contrast with the speaker’s characterization
of the West Wind, which is so closely associated with death, violence, and
chaos. As a symbol, the “flocks” suggest a world where such negative things are
of no concern, because it is so pure, innocent, and beautiful.
Old Palaces and
Towers
In line 33, the speaker describes the “blue Mediterranean”
asleep, dreaming of “old palaces and towers.” The speaker is careful to place
this dream vision in a specific place, the Bay of Baiae near Naples, in Italy.
And so the speaker may have specific buildings in Naples in mind, buildings he
wants the reader to see in their mind.
But the “old palaces and towers” also take on a symbolic
significance in the line. They symbolize the past itself—history—the glorious
accomplishment of previous generations. The personified “Blue Mediterranean” looks at these symbols of the past
with comfort and complacency: he doesn’t feel any need to challenge or change
them. It seems likely, though, that the West Wind might feel differently.
(Indeed, the speaker brings the “blue Mediterranean” into the poem in order to
draw a contrast between it and the violence and energy of the West Wind). The
symbol thus gives the reader a quiet, implicit hint: part of what the speaker
hopes the West Wind will destroy is the past, in order to make space for a new
society to emerge.
Thorns of Life
When the speaker complains about falling on the “thorns of
life” in line 54, he isn’t talking about literal thorns. Instead, the thorns
are symbols—symbols for the difficulties that one faces in life: perhaps pain,
disappointment, or aging. The speaker doesn’t specify what, exactly, he’s
struggling with—what precise forces or feelings have limited his capacities and
creative powers. What matters, instead, is simply that the speaker does feel
limited and diminished, like he has lost something important about
himself—something the West Wind would help him regain. The “thorns of life” are
thus a very vague, general symbol: they stand for the difficulties that the
speaker faces in general, without embodying a particular or specific problem or
disappointment.
Blood
In line 54, the speaker uses the “thorns of life” as a
symbol for the troubles and difficulties that he faces in his life—without
specifying what, exactly, he’s struggling with. He ends the same line with
another symbol: “I bleed,” he exclaims. Here, the blood that the speaker bleeds
serves as a symbol for his disappointment and diminishment. He feels like he
has lost something essential, important—he is less powerful and creative than
he once was. The blood symbolizes this lost power, this lost aspect of his own
personality.
Lyre
In line 57, the speaker expresses a strange desire: he
wants the West Wind to “make [him its] lyre.” A lyre is a small hand-held harp.
In ancient Greece, poets would play the lyre as they performed their poems. As
a result the lyre often serves as a symbol for poetry itself. It does that
here: it symbolizes poetry
But the way the symbol is used in the poem suggests that
the speaker has an unusual relationship with poetry. The speaker doesn’t want
to play the lyre, he wants to be the lyre,
the instrument that the poet plays—in which case, the West Wind itself would be
the poet. In other words, the poet is not asking the wind for inspiration or
for it to make him into a poet. He wants to be in a more subservient
position—he wants to accompany the wind, to help make the
wind's poem sound sweeter.
Ashes and Sparks
In lines 66-7, the speaker asks the West Wind to scatter
his “words” like “ashes and sparks…among mankind.” The “ashes and sparks” are
symbolic—the speaker doesn’t want to start a literal fire. Instead, he wants
his words to serve as inspiration and encouragement, which will help people
break free from the oppression they currently endure. (The speaker never
explicitly says what he wants to see change—but it seems to be something
political). The “ashes and sparks” are thus symbols for the beginning of change,
the start of a revolution, the opening of something radically new.
Throughout the poem, the West Wind has been a force of
destruction and death. But the speaker has celebrated its power. In the last
line, it becomes clear why. The speaker wants renewal and rebirth, a
transformation of society. And the wind helps to bring about that rebirth, by
sweeping away everything that has grown tired, old, and oppressive. In this
sense, it is like "Winter." And the renewal that it promises to help
bring about is like “Spring.”
Spring, in the last line of the poem (and also in line 9),
is thus a symbol for renewal and rebirth—the emergence of something radically
new. This symbol is at the heart of the poem, the thing it wants to see happen.
The poem is an “Ode” to the West Wind because the West Wind, with all its
destructive force, is necessary to make this symbol real.
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