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Transcript

Ode to the West Wind

Theme Analysis of

Ode to the West Wind

Mortality

Transformation

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

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Mortality

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Man and the Natural World/

Language and Communication

Man and the Natural World

Language and Communication

Man and the Natural World/

Man and the Natural World

Transformation

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Mortality/

Language and Communication

Man and the Natural World/

Language and Communication

Transformation

Man and the Natural World

Mortality

Jessie Wu 500061695

Bonnie Yau 500061592

LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD

At the end of "Ode to the West Wind," the speaker betrays his deepest concern: the fate of his ideas. He hopes that his words and thoughts will be spread throughout the world. He’s not sure of the quality of his thinking, but at least it can provide a starting point for other thinkers.

In "Ode to the West Wind," Nature is grander and more powerful than man can hope to be. The natural world is especially powerful because it contains elements like the West Wind and the Spring Wind, which can travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every cloud, leaf, and wave as they go. Man may be able to increase his status by allowing Nature to channel itself through him.

MORTALITY

TRANSFORMATION

The West Wind in Shelley’s ode is depicted as an autumnal wind, preparing the world for winter. As a result, the poem is filled with images of death and decay, reminders of both natural and human mortality. The speaker hopes that the death of one world will be inevitably followed by a new rebirth and a new spring, but the poem leaves this rebirth uncertain.

As the speaker of "Ode to the West Wind" feels himself waning and decaying, he begs the wind to use him as an instrument, inhabit him, distribute his ideas, or prophesy through his mouth. He hopes to transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larger "Spirit" of the West Wind and of Nature itself.

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