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Home  » Learning Paths » The Second Generation of Romanticism: P.B. Shelley and J. Keats
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SMilan - Ode to the West Wind - analysis
[author: Sara Milan - postdate: 2008-03-25]

"Ode to the West Wind" is a famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley composed in 1819 near Florence and published in 1820. The poet travelled a lot in his whole life but it seems that he has chosen Italy as his quiet grave of peace.  
The characters of the ode are a speaking voice and the addressee that is a natural element (the wind). It recalls an important aspect of Romantic poetry or rather the conception of nature like a multilayered aspect because it calls the human nature into question.
It is formally composed of five stanzas written in terza rima completed by a couplet. Each stanza consists of four tercets (ABA, BCB, CDC, DED). This structure seems to be modelled on the Shakespearean sonnet. Terza rima can also make reference to Dante and his Divine Comedy.

The Ode is written in iambic pentameter. The first and the third lines rhyme and the rhyme of the second line is taken up by the fourth and sixth lines and this grants a continuous  movement similar to the movement of the wind.
In the first three stanzas the speaking voice describes the effects of the wind on the earth (1st stanza), the sky (2nd stanza) and the sea (3rd stanza). The second part of the ode, consisting in stanzas 4 and 5 consists in the poet’s invocation to the wind in the hope of an identification process.

In this part the ode takes the form of a prayer to a divinity whose identity is revealed only from the fourth stanza. This is the reason why in the first part the poet speaks about the effects of the wind: as common in prayers first he talks about the attributes of the deity and the effects of it through the different seasons.
The West Wind is shown as a destroyer, preserver and creator.
The ode offers a lot of topics revealing Romantic ideas: an anxiety for freedom, the desire to overcome human limits, the need to rise up the things that imprison the poet. The symbol of this freedom is the wind.
In the first stanza Shelley describes the effects of the wind  in Autumn and in Spring. The autumnal wind is a destroyer: its action is characterised by images of death. I

In spring then, he becomes a preserver so Shelley introduce words which evoke rebirth and life. Here the west wind is personified and is given anthropological qualities. As a matter of fact the verbs used refer to human faculties.

The wind is addressed directly through the use of the second person and the dialogue is the essence of the ode.

The wind is given the image of a person like a ghost that seduces the leaves and drives them somewhere else from the trees.

In line 4 the poet appeals to sight as a chromatic quality. Again leaves are rendered in metaphorical terms: they are sad to be a multitude that are a group of people that are stricken by pest. The wind creates the atmosphere of death but also the regeneration for the next season. Spring is a positive season and when it comes it will feel with a nice perfume. So the poet appeals of another sense: smell. This perfume moves everywhere and each the colours are happy colours: in line 12 they are leaving used: nature is colourful!
In the second stanza the Wind’s action shifts from the land to the sky. The clouds are compared to leaves and boughs. They are messenger angels of the rain that are following the divinity (line 26) and lightning that will come at nightfall. So the autumnal wind is presented again in its destructive function. Words as dirge and sepulchre gives it the Death’s countenance.
In the third stanza the spring wind is described in his creative action on the sea. The sea is seen as the place where in ancient times civilisation was born. It is a topic of the romantic poetry. The poet talks about calm and peace and it is the one typical of the Mediterranean sea. This one is also personified as a languid form, “lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams”, and reflecting “old palaces and towers” lazily like a person asleep. The storming air is taken again at the end talking about the chaotic world of the Atlantic Ocean whose vegetation in the depths shakes with fear.
In the fourth stanza a more personal tone is introduced; the poet identifies him-self with the wind.
Shelley speaks about his childhood when he ran after the wind. He asks the wind to help him regain the physical and spiritual energy he has lost because he feels to have lost his boyhood’s freedom. This evocating Wordsworth’s idea of childhood: the natural, spontaneous and innocent age.
In the last stanza the climax reaches its highest top. He asks the wind to be his lyre, to renew him, to reanimate his spirit, so that his “dead thoughts”, blown about the universe, will come to new life, like the seeds blown with the dead autumn leaves.
The message is hopeful: autumn heralds the approach of  winter, the death for mankind, but spring, representing the regeneration of mankind, will follow after.