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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!
Transformation/
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!
Transformation
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
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.
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.