Analysis of Ode to the West Wind

Analysis of Ode to the West WindPercy Bysshe Shelley begins his poem by addressing the 'Wild West Wind'. He then introduces the theme of death and compares the dead leaves to 'ghosts'. The imagery of 'Pestilence-stricken multitudes' makes the reader aware that Shelley is addressing more than a pile of leaves. His claustrophobic mood is shown when he talks about the 'wintry bed' and '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'. The 'closing night' is used to mean the final night. The 'pumice' shows destruction and creation because when the volcano erupts it destroys. This acts as an introduction and a shadow of what is to come later also helps us prepare for the climax which Shelley intended. It seems that it is only in his death that the 'Wild Spirit' could be lifted as a wave, a leaf, a cloud to blow free in the 'Wild West Wind'. The 'pumice' is probably Shelley's best example of rebirth. As the rising action continues, Shelley talks about the 'Mediterranean' and its 'summer dreams'. Again, he uses soft sounding words to calm the reader into the same dream-like state of the Mediterranean. He then writes like a mourning song 'of the dying year, to which this closing night will be the dome of a vast sepulchre V aulted with all they congregated might. Percy sees his dome as a volcano and when the 'dome' does 'burst,' it will act as a 'Destroyer and Preserver' and creator.In 'Ode to the West Wind,' Shelley uses the wind to represent driving change and a carrier for his ideas. The speaker invokes the Wild West Wind of autumn, which scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring, and asks that the wind, a destroyer and preserver, hear him. The speaker calls the wind the dirge of the dying year, and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind stirs the Mediterranean from ―his summer dreams, and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the ―sapless foliage of the ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him. The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, ―the comrade of the wind is wandering over heaven, then he would never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its powers.He pleads with the wind to lift him ―as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!—for though he is like the wind at heart, untamable and proud—he is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth. The speaker asks the wind to ―make me thy lyre, to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, ―like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth. He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the ―trumpet of a prophecy. Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard to the effect upon mankind thathe hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: ―If winter comes, can spring be far behind?Form each of the seven parts of ―Ode to the West Wind contains five stanzas—four three-line stanzas and a two-line couplet, all metered in iambic pentameter. In the three-line stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, and the middle line does not; then the end sound of that middle line is employed as the rhyme for the first and third lines in the next stanza. The final couplet rhymes with the middle line of the last three-line stanza. Thus each of the seven parts of ―Ode to the West Wind follows this scheme: ABA BCB CDC DED EE.In the fifth section, the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a metaphor for his own art, the expressive capacity that drives ―dead thoughts like ―withered leaves over the universe, to ―quicken a new birth—that is, to quicken the coming of the spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a ―spring of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality—all the things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human mind. Shelley asks the wind to be his spirit, and in the same movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his poetic faculty, which will play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind strums the leaves of the trees. The thematic implication is significant: whereas the older generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a source of truth and authentic experience, the youngergeneration largely viewed nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience.In this poem, Shelley explicitly links nature with art by finding powerful natural metaphors with which to express his ideas about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic expression.The poem Ode to the West Wind can be divided in two parts: the first three cantos and the last two cantos.The first stanza begins with the alliteration Wild West Wind. The form of the apostrophe makes the wind also a personification. However, one must not think of this Ode as an optimistic praise of the wind; it is clearly associated with autumn. The second canto of the poem is much more fluid than the first one. Shelley also mentions that when the West Wind blows, it seems to be singing a funeral song about the year coming to an end and that the sky covered with a dome of clouds looks like a 'sepulchre' , a burial chamber or grave for the dying year or the year which is coming to an end. Shelley in this canto expands his vision from the earthly scene with the leaves before him to take in the vaster commotion of the skies. It appears as if the third canto shows in comparison with the previous cantos – a turning-point. Whereas Shelley had accepted death and changes in life in the first and second canto, he now turns to wistful reminiscence recalls an alternative possibility of transcendence. From line 26 to line 36 he gives an image ofnature. But if we look closer at line 36, we realize that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight, because it obviously means so sweet that one feels faint in describing them. At the end of the canto the poet tells us that a heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed. This may be a reference to the years that have passed and chained and bowed, the hope of the people who fought for freedom and were literally imprisoned. The West Wind acts as a force for change and forward movement in the human and natural world.西风颂查良铮译本第一节哦，狂暴的西风，秋之生命的呼吸！你无形，但枯死的落叶被你横扫，有如鬼魅碰到了巫师，纷纷逃避；黄的，黑的，灰的，红得像患肺痨，呵，重染瘟疫的一群：西风呵，是你以车驾把有翼的种子催送到黑暗的冬床上，它们就躺在那里，像是墓中的死穴，冰冷，深藏，低贱，直等到春天，你碧空的姊妹吹起她的喇叭，在沉睡的大地上响遍，（唤出嫩芽，像羊群一样，觅食空中）将色和香充满了山峰和平原。