Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"

      Percy Shelley is one of the great 19th century Romantic poets. Unfortunately, his poems have not always enjoyed high praise from all who have read his work. For instance, the poet T. S. Eliot once dismissed Shelley, writing that “The Ideas of Shelley seem to me always to be ideas of adolescence…I find his ideas repellent.” In spite of this critical judgment, Eliot’s own poetry was influenced by Shelley’s, and later in his life Eliot even acknowledged the profundity of Shelley’s final unfinished poem “The Triumph of Life.” Among critics today, there isn’t much dispute about the quality of Shelley’s poetry. But that quality does not assure that someone reading Shelley’s poems for the first time will find them inspiring or even interesting. That is true because his poems can often extend well beyond a reader’s comprehension. His most anthologized poem, “Ode to the West Wind” exemplifies this point.

                            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, lie ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O Thou,              5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within 'tis grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion e'er the dreaming earth, and fill         10
(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!

                                             II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15
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           20

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 tis closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre                  25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

                                             III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,                 30
Lulled 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             35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level's powers

Cleave themselves into chasm, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know                40

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O 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           45

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             50
Scarce seemed 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 chained and bowed         55
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                    60

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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!          65
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?            70       

The first thing to know about this poem is that the Romantic poets (e.g. Coleridge, Wordsworth) connected the wind with the changing of the seasons, from autumn through winter and into spring. Shelley begins his poem by addressing the west wind as a “Wild Spirit” and depicting through his imagery this “Wind” as an animated presence that has the power to bring death and rebirth on earth. It drives the dead “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” leaves from the trees and “chariotest” the “winged seeds” to “their dark wintry” beds, where they “lie cold and low,/Each like a corpse…until/Thine azure sister (west wind) of the Spring” blows her trumpet and the world is reborn with “sweet buds” and fills “With living hues and odours plain and hill.” At the end of section I Shelley calls to the wind to “hear” him. What he wishes to communicate with this awesome “presence” is withheld until sections IV and V of the poem.

In section II of the poem, Shelley lifts his eyes to the sky and sees “clouds,” which his imagination connects to the dying leaves of section I. However, something rather unexpected and strange happens. Those clouds/leaves become “Angels of rain and lightning” which then become “Like the bright hair uplifted from the head/Of some fierce Maenad…/The locks of the approaching storm.” Shelley’s similes have taken us from analogies of fall and spring to biblical/apocalyptic imagery to the imagery of the frenzied women of the Greek myth of Dionysus, who was believed to die each fall and rise each spring. At the end of this section, he once again calls to the wind, asking it to “hear” him. The reader must wonder, what is it Shelley seeks? The first section suggests Shelley wants to express and celebrate the changing seasons and the cycle of life. But here the biblical and Greek imagery conveys something much more.

In section III, Shelley’s imagination looks seaward, to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and envisions the west wind’s effect upon the waters. The wind’s “presence” awakens the Mediterranean from its “summer dreams” to mirror the “palaces and towers,” Roman emperors built above Baiae bay near Naples and now “All overgrown with azure moss and flowers/So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.” After his looking backward to Ancient Rome, Shelley pictures the Atlantic and sees the west wind cleaving its waves into “chasms,” while in the depths below, “The sapless foliage of the ocean, know/Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,/And tremble and despoil themselves.” The key word in the passage is the verb “know,” and in this section, Shelley affirms that like the leaves and clouds of the previous sections, the waters of Baiae Bay, the Atlantic’s waves, and the vegetation beneath the sea all “know” the west wind’s voice and obey its commands. Again, he cries “O hear!”

In the last two sections of the poem Shelley reveals what it is he wants the wind to “hear.” In lines 43-45, Shelley imagines himself as an object of the Wind’s power. Perhaps by being blown about by the wind, Shelley could “share” “The impulse of thy (wind’s) strength.” He remembers when he was young that the imagination of his “boyhood,” made him a “comrade” of the wind’s “wandering…to outstrip the skiey speed.” For the Romantic poets, childhood imagination, uncontaminated by the adult knowledge that can manacle it, could receive spiritual insights from nature. But this experience, freely open to those in childhood innocence, is no longer available to the adult Shelley. A way to receive the wind’s spirit is told in the next line: “I would never have striven/As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.” Striving with the wind in “prayer”? If Shelley’s language sounds familiar, that is because it has echoes of biblical characters (e.g. the Psalms, Job) who call on God to relieve their suffering. For the first time in the poem, he directly appeals to the wind and cries out for it to “lift [him] as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” because “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.” According to Shelley, the wind possesses the power to heal him, to relieve his suffering, to lift him beyond the limits of ordinary life. But he remains frustrated in his “striving” to be as the leaves, clouds and sea until in the final section he discovers a means to unchain his spirit.

In this concluding section, Shelley returns to Greek myth with the first four words: “Make me thy lyre.” The “lyre” is the Eolian lyre (it was also called a harp) is a musical instrument that produces sounds when the wind passes through its strings. The Greek poet and prophet Orpheus could charm all animate and inanimate objects with its music. Envisioning himself as the musical instrument upon which the west wind can play its harmonies, he can receive the “Spirit fierce” of the west wind, become one with that spirit, “Be thou me, impetuous one!” and have his “dead thoughts” driven “over the universe/Like withered leaves to quicken new birth!” The thoughts fall dead to the ground but are “quicken[ed] to a new birth” by the wind. The poem accelerates through lines 65-70, and Shelley rises like a poet/prophet calling on humanity to hear in his voice “the incantation of this verse,” which will “Scatter” his “words” among mankind!” This “incantation” will awaken humanity through the prophetic power of Shelley’s words: “Be through my lips to unawakened Earth/The Trumpet of a prophecy!” Finally able to receive the inspiration the west wind breathes into all life, Shelley is quietly confident and whispers the poem’s conclusion: “O Wind,/If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”