Ode to the West Wind

It was originally published in 1820 by Charles Ollier in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems.

Some also believe that the poem was written in response to the loss of his son, William (born to Mary Shelley) in 1819.

His other poems written at the same time—"The Masque of Anarchy", Prometheus Unbound, and "England in 1819"—take up these same themes of political change, revolution, and role of the poet.

[3] In ancient Greek tradition, an ode was considered a form of formal public invocation.

In the English tradition, the ode was more of a "vehicle for expressing the sublime, lofty thoughts of intellectual and spiritual concerns".

[1] "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 poem begins with three sections describing the wind's effects upon earth, air, and ocean.

In the last two sections, the poet speaks directly to the wind, asking for its power, to lift him up and make him its companion in its wanderings.

This probably refers to the fact that the line between the sky and the stormy sea is indistinguishable and the whole space from the horizon to the zenith is covered with trailing storm clouds.

Line 21 begins with "Of some fierce Maenad" and again the west wind is part of the second canto of the poem; here he is two things at once: first he is "dirge/Of the dying year" (23–24) and second he is "a prophet of tumult whose prediction is decisive"; a prophet who does not only bring "black rain, and fire, and hail" (28), but who "will burst" (28) it.

Shelley in this canto "expands his vision from the earthly scene with the leaves before him to take in the vaster commotion of the skies".

The clouds now reflect the image of the swirling leaves; this is a parallelism that gives evidence that we lifted "our attention from the finite world into the macrocosm".

With the "Mediterranean" as subject of the canto, the "syntactical movement" is continued and there is no break in the fluency of the poem; it is said that "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" (30–33).

Then the verb that belongs to the "wind" as subject is not "lay", but the previous line of this canto, that says Thou who didst waken ... And saw" (29, 33).

He says that it might be "a creative you interpretation of the billowing seaweed; or of the glimmering sky reflected on the heaving surface".

Baiae's bay (at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples) actually contains visible Roman ruins underwater (that have been shifted due to earthquakes.)

Whereas Shelley had accepted death and changes in life in the first and second canto, he now turns to "wistful reminiscence [, recalls] an alternative possibility of transcendence".

But if we look closer at line 36, we realise that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight, because it obviously means, so sweet that one feels faint in describing them.

Shelley here identifies himself with the wind, although he knows that he cannot do that, because it is impossible for someone to put all the things he has learned from life aside and enter a "world of innocence".

That Shelley is deeply aware of his closedness in life and his identity shows his command in line 53.

At the end of the canto the poet tells us that "a heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd" (55).

This may be a reference to the years that have passed and "chained and bowed" (55) the hope of the people who fought for freedom and were literally imprisoned.

Shelley was a staunch atheist and one of the characteristics of Romanticism is equating nature with divinity, with the West Wind taking on the role of God.

In this canto, the "sense of personality as vulnerably individualised led to self-doubt" and the greatest fear was that what was "tameless, and swift, and proud" (56) will stay "chain'd and bow'd" (55).

The poet in this canto uses plural forms, for example, "my leaves" (58, 64), "thy harmonies" (59), "my thoughts" (63), "ashes and sparks" (67) and "my lips" (68).

But the most powerful call to the Wind are the lines: "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!"

This poem is a highly controlled text about the role of the poet as the agent of political and moral change.

[citation needed] This was a subject Shelley wrote a great deal about, especially around 1819, with this strongest version of it articulated the last famous lines of his "Defence of Poetry": "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.