Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792–1822

Major

themes

joyous ecstasy. brooding despair

• The restlessness and brooding

• The rebellion against authority

• The interchange with nature

• The power of the visionary imagination and of poetry

• The pursuit of ideal love

• The untamed spirit ever in search of freedom

Shelley exemplified these in the way he lived his life and they live on in the

substantial body of work that he left the world after his legendary death by

drowning at age twenty-nine.

The life and works of Shelley exemplify

Romanticism in its extremes

Ode to the West WindIMAGERY

I- Images of plants and earth

II-Images of air, atmosphere, weather

III-Images of ocean and sea

Shelley is a poet that works with imagery. He uses colour, sound and motion. There’s a constant movement. This effect is achieved because he uses terza rima.

IV- Contrasts the natural world of the first three to the speaker’s own situation.

He lacks the power, the strength, the youth. The wind is the epitome of the

power of nature. It shows a contrast between need and reality. He wants to

reach people through his poetry, but he can’t. There’s a realization of his

limitations.

V- Resolves the contrast by seeing

a parallel between the wind and

the speaker’s poetry. The wind

awakens the earth in spring (re-

birth). He wants his poetry to

awaken the earth. What he wants

is people to read his poetry. His

poetry would be sound/music to

mankind’s ears. In this way he

would be a prophet through his

poetry. Politically speaking, he

wants his message to be known;

he’s conscious raising.

Form

The rhyme scheme in each part follows a pattern known as terza rima, the three-line rhyme scheme employed by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In the three-line terza rimastanza, 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.

It is a lyrical poem that addresses the west wind as a powerful force and asks it to scatter the poet’s words

throughout the world.

Mythology at Work

•West Wind The god Zephyr Recall the love story of Ceyx and Alcone (the Halcyon days of peaceful waters)

•MaenadCrazed followers of Dionysus / Bacchus Recall Orpheus and Eurydice (how he tried to bring her back from death)

•The lyreGod Apollo’s instrument

•“Ashes and sparks” – the rising phoenix

TONE

Of forward motion appropriate for the physical nature of the wind and appropriate in foreshadowing the end of the poem, which looks forward to the spring.

MOOD

1- It is a nature poem.2- It discusses a very romantic idea/view.

The poet identifies himself with the west wind as a destroyer of the old order and a preserver and prophet of a new future.

Ode to the West Wind is romantic in two ways:

• The MOOD to be communicated is the sense of DYNAMIC FORWARD MOVEMENT.