THE SECOND GENERATION OF ROMANTICISM

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ode to the West Wind

The second generation of Romanticism is represented by three relevant poets: Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron. All the representative poets of the second generation died young and far from home which means they left England with which they were not satisfied.

They kept most of the characteristics of the Romantic poetry of the first generation but expressed their feelings with a different mood. The first theme to which they were faithful was the theme of nature as you can see in the Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The first element that the intelligent reader notices is that here there's no longer in front of a ballad. As a matter of fact he or she will realize that another very typical form of poetry, generally addressing an object, a situation or a person in a high dignified language, using abstract concepts and references generally sending back to classical art.

As the word itself suggests an ode heavily relies on the phonological level since it implies a listener. In this specific poem the ode is addressed to the West wind, that is the wind that comes from the West and generally brings with it rain.

From analyzing the layout the reader understands that the poem consists of five sections, each performing a definite function.

The reader can also realize that the first three stanzas end with a refrain.

The refrain has the task to create an emphatic effect in the reader ("oh, hear"). The exclamation mark makes the role of emotions particularly important, a typical feature of Romanticism.

In the first stanza P. B. Shelley conveys the effects of the West wind on the earth and namely on the dead leaves. In the second stanza the poet conveys the effect of the wind on the sky and specifically on the clouds. In the third stanza the effect of the wind on the sea and namely on the waves. The fourth stanza has the task to re-organize and drawn together all the previous elements. The fifth stanza is an invocation to the wind so that the intelligent reader may wonder why the poet makes an invocation to the wind.

From the poetical point of view the ode shows to the reader that the poet uses his own variant of Dante's terza rima ending each stanza with a couplet which seems up the theme of the stanza in the fashion of the English or Shakespearian sonnet.

Shelley watched the windy sky from a wood beside the Arno.

The west wind - the very essence of Autumn - was driving the dead, but multi-coloured leaves along. Two images bring the scene to life: the leaves are like ghost, pursued by an enchanter, they are like a great crowd of people fleeing, panic-stricken, in time of plague.

But the leaves are not doomed to death like the "pestilence-stricken multitudes", they carry to the "wintry bed" the seeds that will emerge into new life in spring. There follows the invocation of the poet who addresses the wind a "destroyer and preserver".

In the second stanza Shelley observes more closely the effects of the wind on the sky. He sees bits of detached clouds being swept along like the leaves and behind them, streaming up from the horizon, streaks and trails of clouds which he later compares to locks of air. This clouds are angels (in the sense of messengers) of the rain and lightening that will come at night fell.

In the third stanza Shelley visualizes how the wind disturbed the typical calm of the Mediterranean Sea personified as a languid form ("bulled by the coil of his crystalline streams") and reflecting "old palaces and towers" but reflecting them lazily like a person asleep (in this lines, the violent energy of the previous stanza has ceased) à soft consonants and falling cadences have replaced the earlier harsh consonants and strenuous rhythms. The moods and the tone change again, when the poet pictures how the West wind tore chasms in the Atlantic ocean, so violent that in the depths of the sea, the vegetation shooks, as with fear and shed its "sapless foliage".

Shelley also appeals to the language of sense impressions (hearing, sight, smell, touch).