Ode to the West Wind
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-This poem was written in 1819 and published in 1820. “Ode to the West Wind” is one of Pierce Shelleys best known lyrics.
-The structure of this poem divides into two main parts. In the first part, which consists of sections one to three, the main focus is on nature, as the connection between the West Wind and the earth, the air, and the water is described. The second part of this poem, consisting of sections four and five, the poet expresses his own state of mind and explores the relationship between the West Wind and himself by still, using the same images of the first half.
-The rhyme scheme of “Ode to the West Wind” is ABA BCB CDC DED FF, and it is written in iambic pentameter.
-The opening stanzas set a tone of freedom with words like mid, shed, and shook however, later on, words with ending sounds such as rain, fire and hail cause an effect up destruction. Fianlly towards the end of stanza three, the negative side of the wind becomes aparent. The use of words such as dying, closing and dome, are used which creates a deathlike and depressing tone.
“Ode to the West Wind”
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumns 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 oer the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep skys commotion,
Loose clouds like earths 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 aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zeniths 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 vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiaes bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the waves intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers