Read the poem Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Write an essay of no more than 1500 words in which you analyse the poem and comment on the poetic form and language used

A210 Approaching Literature

TMA 03

Read the poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Write an essay of no more than 1500 words in which you analyse the poem and comment on the poetic form and language used (e.g. rhyme, rhythm, stress pattern, metaphor, imagery, tone, word order, alliteration, point of view) and the way they contribute to the meaning.

The dramatic alliteration in line one, ‘Wild West Wind’, announces energy and force, which flows into the rest of the poem, emphasizing how wild and destructive this wind can be. Parts of the poem suggest the unpredictability of this ‘Wind’, with ‘from whose unseen presence’ (L2), ‘Uncontrollable’ (L 47), and even contradictory statements such as ‘Destroyer and preserver’ (L 14). Shelley creates a sense of movement, making the wind more effective, with imagery, such as ‘Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing’ (L 3), ‘who chariotest to their dark wintry bed’ (L 6) and ‘Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere’ (L13).

This poem is made up of five stanzas’, each one a sonnet of four tercets, with a concluding couplet. The tercets share the same rhyme scheme of aba bcb cdc ded throughout, although the closing couplets don’t rhyme in each stanza. They do however, all end with an invocation, giving a pleading tone to the poem, as ‘hear, oh, hear’ (L 14), ‘oh, hear’ (L 28), ‘oh, hear’ (L42), ‘tameless, swift and proud’ (L 56) and ‘can spring be far behind?’ (L 70).

The stress pattern of the iambic pentameter of the sonnet form of this poem, contributes to an easier understanding of the rhyme, with a balanced rhythm. There is an awkward syntax, with ‘odours plain and hill’ (L 12). Shelley’s use of ‘hill’ here is merely to keep the rhyme pattern. The rhythm and language used during the first stanza, gives a dreamy pastoral feel to the moment with, ‘Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow’ (L 9) and ‘Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth’ (L10). Although the closing couplet of this first stanza contains an antithesis ‘Destroyer and preserver’ (L 14), it does however sum up what has happened here, the destruction demonstrated with ‘from whose unseen presence the leaves dead’ (L 2), ‘Pestilence stricken multitudes’ (L 5), ‘The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low’ (L 7), and new growth with ‘Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air’ (L 11). Then the promise of spring ‘With living hues and odours’ (L12), tells us that all is not lost. Appealing to us to ‘hear, oh, hear!’ (L 14). It seems acceptable for the wind to cause so much destruction, in order to transform from one season to the other.

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The second stanza doesn’t flow as smoothly, containing more of a declamatory style as ‘Angels of rain and lightening’ (L 18), and ‘Vaulted with all thy congregated might’ (L26) and some difficult alliteration, with ‘whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion’ (L 15), ending the closing couplet with a declaration of ‘Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!’ (L 28). This sonnet wants to be shouted out, telling of the cyclic changes of nature, the violence inflicted during these changes. Shelley’s imagery invokes these aspects of nature, ‘showing’ what is happening, and to feel the power of the wind, using dramatic metaphors warning of the storm’s turbulence ‘Like the bright hair uplifted from the head’ (L 20), and ‘The locks of the approaching storm’ (L 23). At the same time, the poetic form affects the reader with heavenly pastoral aspects, with ‘from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean’ (L 17). The tone of this second stanza is very energetic; you can’t help but read it with ardour.

The third stanza relates to the destructive ‘Wild West Wind’ and how it ‘didst waken from his summer dreams’ (L 29), ‘The blue Mediterranean, where he lay’ (L 30) and ‘saw in sleep, old palaces and towers’ (L33), these being the Roman palaces of Baiae’s bay, lost when the sea levels rose (p.465 Notes). The metaphors depict images of nature, with ‘The sea-blooms and oozy woods’ (L 39), the ‘oozy woods’ being seaweeds (p.465 Notes). Although this imagery is drawn from nature, giving a pastoral feel to these lines, what Shelley is actually saying, is that he is afraid of losing his poetic gift, and also, he desires political change and regeneration (p.465 Notes). He is using the cyclic changes of the seasons as analogies for his desires, and also his fears of this change, including the death and destruction as necessary stages to go through in order to have this transformation. His fear is portrayed in the closing couplet of this stanza, with a reluctance to want these changes, ‘and suddenly grow gray with fear’ (L 41), ‘And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!’ (L 42). These first three stanzas are narrated in the third person, not belonging to any specific character, but omniscient in that the speaker is able to recount the motivations of the wild wind, to tell us where it travels and what it destroys.

The language of the fourth stanza changes the tone, giving a more sombre feel to it. In the first three stanza’s, the ‘Wild West Wind’ has been the main topic, whereas here, the speaker uses metaphors of nature to depict himself and his desires. It is narrated in the first person, with language such as ‘If I were a dead leaf’ (L 43) and ‘If I were a swift cloud’ (L 44), confessing his weakness in his role of poetic prophet (p.465 Notes), begging that he could be given the power and strength of the ‘wind’, to ‘share’ (L 45) ‘The impulse of thy strength’ (L 46) and wanting to be lifted ‘as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!’ (L 53), instead of succumbing to his weaknesses, saying ‘I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!’ (L 54). In the closing couplet he likens himself to the wind, but as one who has been too proud to change, with ‘ A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed one too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. (L’s 55 & 56).

Shelley’s use of imagery in the fifth stanza, uses metaphors of nature, begging for a renewal of his power, such as ‘what if my leaves are falling’ (L 58) and ‘The tumult of thy mighty harmonies’ (L 59) ‘will take from both (meaning himself and the forest) a deep autumnal tone.’ (L 60). With his poetic power, ‘by the incantation of this verse’ (L 65), he hopes to inflict changes ‘among mankind’ (L 67) and ‘to unawakened earth’ (L 68). He beseeches the ‘wind’ in the closing couplet with, ‘O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?’ (L’s 69 & 70), as if doubting his power to inaugurate change. Shelley uses the vibrant colours of spring to reinforce the dying of nature during the seasonal changes, ‘Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,’ (L 4), Pestilence-stricken multitudes’ (L 5), although it has been suggested that the colours represent the different races of humans, (p465 Notes). This would tie in with Shelley using nature’s seasonal changes as analogies for his desires for change and regeneration.

Throughout the poem, Shelley employs enjambements, enabling the theme of the destructive wind to flow from one scene to another without hesitation, a poetic tool for enforcing the image of movement. Examples of this are: lines 2 & 3 with ‘from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven’, lines 6 & 7 ‘Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed the winged seeds’, lines 21 & 22 ‘even from the dim verge of the horizon to the zenith’s height’ and lines 50 & 51 ‘when to outstrip thy skiey speed scarce seemed a vision’. Shelley’s use of caesuras gives time for reflection and emphasizes what has gone before, an instance of this being: ‘Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!’ (L 14), where the caesura stresses the contradiction of these words.

Shelley called this an Ode, due to specifically addressing the seasonal changes in nature, even though he was using this as analogous to his hopes and desires. The imagery of nature’s struggle against the ‘Wild West Wind’ suggests that he was struggling against social and political forces in his plight to affect change, as he desired. We as the reader, feel disturbed by the violence inflicted, but then gain reassurance as the poem moves on, knowing that after the wintry havoc, comes the rebirth of spring, constructing a ‘spring’ for Shelley’s desires of regeneration and social and political change. He was a Romantic poet, expressing poetic imagination and conception of nature and its relation to man, lifting the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, making familiar objects be as if they were unfamiliar. (pages 326 & 327 Romantic Writings).

Shelley was writing poetry during a period of great political unrest in Britain and abroad, by using his form of poetry of Romanticism, he plays the role of ‘a poetic prophet’, accentuated in this poem in the fifth stanza, ‘Be through my lips to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophecy!’ (lines 68 & 69). ‘Seeing Romantic writing as writing in history allows us take account of how it takes part in the events and responds to the pressures of the turbulent period in which it was written’ (p 46 Romantic Writings).

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