ODE TO THE WEST WIND

Ode to the West Wind

Introduction

Ode to the West Wind is one of the most well known lyrics of English. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this poem in October, 1819 when he was in Italy, and feeling dejected about his helplessness in doing anything about the political situation back home in England. Shelley was a visionary, a revolutionary and a hard core optimist. He believed in the capability of humanity to achieve an ideal social order where the ideals of the French Revolution will be realized and everything would be as it ideally should be.

Ode to the West Wind is an affirmation by Shelley of the power of poetry, and of his own power and capability to bring about a positive change in the world. He makes clear the role of literature here in this poem in bringing about a revolution in the world. Man and his relation to the natural world is also a major theme of the poem.

Structure

As the title suggests, this poem is an Ode. This is a poem of praise written to eulogize the animating and fierce power of the West Wind. The poem has been divided into five Cantos (the Italian poetry equivalent of chapters) and each canto consists of fourteen lines divided into four tercets and a concluding couplet. The stanza form of tercets used here is called terza rima or the ‘third rhyme’. Terza rima is composed of three line stanzas that follow an interlinked rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme of a terza rima stanza is aba, bcb, cdc, ded and so on.

Shelley has divided the cantos according to the activity of the west wind across various elements of nature. So, the first canto talks about the west wind’s movement across the earth, the second canto is about its adventures across the skies, the third one about the oceans, the fourth and the fifth cantos shift the focus to the personal anguish of the poet.

CANTO I

The poet invokes the west wind and uses a series of comparisons and natural imagery to talk about the ferocity of the wind. Autumn is personified and the wind is the breath of Autumn that it exhales and inhales. The wind is metaphorically called an enchanter or a magician who can drive away the multitude of ghosts that are scattered in the form of decaying leaves.

The current of the wind works as a chariot that takes the seeds (here conceived as having wings and flying) to their places of hibernation where they will keep lying until the blue sister of the personified Autumn, i. e. Spring shall come, blow her trumpet, invoke the whole nature into activity and will cause the dormant seeds to germinate and fill the whole landscape with color and fragrance.

This way, the wind is a destroyer and preserver at the same time. It destroys the dried, withering leaves, and preserves life by making the seeds hibernate.

The poet implores the wind to listen to what he has to say.

CANTO II

The action of the wind moves to the sky. The ocean and the sky are envisaged here as trees (metaphor) whose boughs are entangled and they are shedding clouds that are the ‘angels of rain and lightning’. The clouds are indicative of the imminent storm, are spread across the sky and look like the dazzling but disheveled hair of the ferocious female Maenad, follower of the Roman god of wine and intoxication Bacchus.

The year is dying and West wind is the dirge of the dying year . The whole earth is the grave of the dying year. The night serves as the dome of this vast grave and is filled to the brim with vapours which will solidify and eventually cause rain, hailstorms, and fire.

He again begs the wind to listen to something he has to say.

CANTO III

The canto follows the travails of the wind over the Mediterranean sea. The Mediterranean is personified and is imagined by the poet as sleeping beside a pumice island in the bay of Baiae. It is enjoying its sleep and is having sweet dreams of old, lost palaces and towers. The palaces and towers look quivering to the ocean, and are full of moss and flowers that are so aromatic that the sense of the narrator fails when he tries to picture their beauty.

The poet addresses the wind and says that your power levels everything, and the Atlantic is in such a great awe of you that it cleaves itself to make way for you, while at the bottom the sea plants know of your arrival because of the commotion created on the surface, they are frightened and shed their dried leaves out of fear.

Once again, he pleads with the wind to give an ear to him.

CANTO IV

The first half of this canto is about the unfulfilled desire of the narrator to be like the leaves or clouds or waves, so that he could feel the animating, energetic, aggressive impulse of the west wind and could partake of some of its energy. When he was young, he was as sprightly as the wind itself and could have challenged the wind in its airy wanderings. But the ‘heavy weight’ of life has chained him, crippled him, and has impaired all his efforts to tackle the hardships of life.

CANTO V

The final canto brings everything together and the intent of the poet in invoking the west wind becomes clear. The poet wants the wind to make him its lyre as it has made the whole forest its lyre, and create deep, seasoned music as is created when it moves around the forest. He beseeches the wind to become his spirit. He urges the wind to take his revolutionary, radical ideas and scatter them throughout the world the way it scatters the dead leaves around and facilitates the nature in coming to life again. He compares himself to an extinguished hearth and his ideas to the sparks that will fly from it. The earth is unawakened and it needs his rebellious ideas to attain a better order. He wants to be the lyre of the wind so that it could spread his message of hope to the world, The message that every night is followed by day, and every winter is followed by spring.

CRITICAL NOTES

The poem is an ode as has already been mentioned. An ode is a lyrical poem that has an elaborate stanza structure, is serious in thought, and has a philosophical tone. Traditional odes were divided into three parts according to the thoughts contained in them – strophe, antistrophe, and epode. Strophe would establish one point of view, antistrophe would bring in a contrary idea, and epode would bring both of them together. This ode roughly follows this pattern as the first three cantos are in the second person, the fourth canto makes a shift to the first person and the final canto brings the poet and the wind together.

The setting of the poem could be said to be the whole of the earth including the sky and the oceans. The poem traces the movement of the wind across all the three surfaces. Various actual locations like the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Baiae’s bay – are talked about. The earth moves from the depths of the oceans to the height of zenith in the sky. At the same time, the activity occurs in the heart and mind of the poet in the last two catos.

The poem is replete with symbols and imagery. The poet begins the poem in the form of an address to the west wind. He has something to say that he keeps deferring till the fourth canto. He uses a number of similes and metaphors to describe the ferocity of the wind.

In the first canto he compares, using a simile, the wind to an enchanter. Then he uses a metaphor to compare the wind to a chariot that takes the ‘winged’ seeds to their bed. Spring is the personified ‘azure’ sister of Autumn. First, Autumn was personified and the wind was its breath. Now the wind is being looked at as the wild spirit of autumn.

It is a destroyer ans well a preserver.

The second canto compares, through a metaphor, the heaven and earth to a tree. Clouds have been likened to loose leaves in a simile. The clouds have again been compared to the bright, messy hair of Maenad in a simile.

The whole year has been personified as a dead person, and the wind is metaphorized as the dirge of the year. The night is compared to the dome of the grave of the year in a simile. The wind is invoked again and again.

The refrain like invocation of ‘O wild west wind’ is alliterative.

The Mediterranean is personified as sleeping and enjoying sweet dreams. Atlantic has also been personified as someone who is scared of the wind and clears the path for the wind.

The West wind is a personified throughout and is a symbol of energy, power, and change. The poet implores the wind to impart some of its strength and ferocity to him. The wind is symbolically presented as a ‘destroyer’ of the old order and ideas, and a ‘preserver’ of the new.

Dead leaves symbolize the dead or old ideas that are running the world right now. Simultaneously, they symbolize the new and rebellious ideas of the poet taht he is not able to propagate because of his adverse circumstances.

Images of death and destruction also form an important part of the poem. The dead leaves, the dead year, the sepulchre, dirge, hailstorms give an anxious tone to the poem.

The image of the harp or lyre in the last canto is also a significant one. The poet wants to be turned into a harp so that the wind could pass through him and scatter his music (ideas) around the world.

There are a lot of references to oceans and water bodies in the poem. The ocaen and sky being a tree, the clouds floating on the ‘stream’ of the wind, the mediterranean, the Atlantic, the sea foliage are all images of water bodies.