"Ode to the West Wind" by P.B. Shelley

Introduction

Ode to the West Wind is one of the most famous lyrics written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who is considered, together with Lord Byron and John Keats, one of the most important poets belonging to the Second Romantic generation.
This poetry was written in 1819 during his stay in Florence and was published together with Prometheus Unbound in 1820.
It contains five stanzas and a final couplet that describe the West Wind effects on nature.

In this poetry, the West Wind, a natural element, becomes a symbol of the poetic inspiration and of radical change for man and society brought into the world by poetry and the prophetic figure of the poet.

Inspired by Pindaro, Orazio and John Dryden, in this lyric Shelley reconciles the Romantic sensitivity and his rebel spirit with some features of the ode, a particular literary genre, in order to express and celebrate human feelings with a high language.

The five stanzas and the final couplet transmit sensations and impressions generated by the West Wind, and the unconscious inspiration that, through the wind, makes the poet a prophet.
So, the poet invites all men to the change of reality.

Analysis

In the first stanza, the poet turns to the West Wind exalting its “destroyer and preserver power”.
It upsets nature by “stripping the trees of their leaves” but, at the same time, preserves it, transporting “the seeds which, giving birth to new buds”, will revive nature with the overall of the Spring, “rising from their tomb”, that is the earth.

In the second stanza, Shelley continues his invocation to the West wind, comparing it to the Menade’s hair, a follower of the worship of Dioniso.
The author resumes the theme of death even in this stanza, comparing the “screams” of the West Wind (the wind blows) to the “moaning of the year that dies” (the passing of seasons).
In this way, the Wind participates in the life-death cycle, which regulates land arrangements.
It goes up the sky and creates “the dome of a vast sepulchre”, from which will fall “rain, hail and fire”.
In these two stanzas, Shelley constructs deliberately a messy syntactic structure in order to simulate the wind movement.

In the third stanza, the rhythm slows down because the author wants to describe the encounter between the West Wind and the sea.
The West Wind, in fact, gently awakens the Mediterranean sea and retraces the “Atlantic’s lever powers” showing its underwater selves.
Through this awesome description, Shelley transmits to us that the West Wind is a force destined to last for a long time and to overcome space.
After dealing with the effects that the West Wind comes on earth, on the sky and on the sea, in the fourth stanza Shelley confides the reason for his invocation: he feels oppressed by an inert and sad life in comparison with the ideal world of “poetry”.
However, he is conscious of being “tameless and swift and proud” (verse 56) and, for this reason, he formulates his prayer to the wind, asking it to share its impetuous and indomitable spirit with him ( “[…] make me thy lyre” (verse 57) and “Be thou me, impetuous one!” (verse 62))

This request for communion with the West Wind, shown in the fifth stanza, is connected with the figure of the Menade, who dances feeling invaded by the god.
In this intimate awakening of vital energy, Shelley reveals to become the wind because the author, through this incredible force, succeeds in finding the typical poetic inspiration.

In the final couplet, Shelley announces to humanity that the wind, like poetry, is the “trumpet of prophecy” that awakens the sleeping land of its torpor (the men and the society) and announces the arrival of spring (the radical change).