Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1820

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Four Seasons

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter are all accounted for in “Ode to the West Wind.” The poet treats the names of seasons like proper names, capitalizing the first letter when they’re invoked (Lines 1, 9, and 70). The West Wind is an autumnal creature (“though breath of Autumn’s being” [Line 1]). The associated imagery calls to mind a blustery fall day: dead leaves, whipping winds, an overcast sky, and a fierce storm. Winter is a dark bed where living things “lie cold and low” (Line 7) like “a corpse within its grave” (Line 8). Spring, autumn’s “azure sister” (Line 9), arrives with fanfare, and the natural world erupts in blossom. Summer is the only season that fails to appear as a noun, only surfacing once as an adjective (“his summer dreams” [Line 29]).

Summer and winter are sluggish seasons in “Ode to the West Wind.” In Canto 3, the Mediterranean sleeps, dreaming of ruins until the West Wind shakes it awake. Winter sleep is dreamless, akin to death. Spring features most prominently in the poem as a foil to the West Wind’s autumn. Autumn’s fearsome wind and storms, “black rain, and fire, and hail” (Line 28), usher in the death of winter. Spring comes with its own cacophony, “driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air” (Line 11) to birth new life and begin the cycle of seasons once again.

Christian Imagery

Shelley dispenses vaguely Christian imagery throughout the poem. “Ode to the West Wind” situates Heaven, the realm of angels, somewhere amid the clouds above the Earth. This cosmic configuration features repeatedly in the Bible, heavenly beings descending from above to interact with humankind. The West Wind moves freely between the two realms in a way reminiscent of the Holy Spirit. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity describes how the Godhead has appeared to humans in three forms: as the Father, who created the world; as the Son, Jesus Christ, who redeemed humankind from sin; and as the Holy Spirit, the ephemeral force that intercedes in the lives of Christians on Earth. The speaker calls the West Wind “Spirit” in Cantos 1 and 5 (Lines 13 and 61), reinforcing this connection.

Like the Christian God, the West Wind is omnipresent and omnipotent, “moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver” (Lines 13-14). Awe-inducing power over the natural world is another God-like trait of the West Wind, as demonstrated in the book of Nahum: “The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it” (“Nahum 1:5 NIV.” Bible Gateway.). The colors of the dead leaves in Canto 1 (“Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” [Line 4]) coincide with the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the book of Revelation. The horsemen run from the wind’s presence, once again placing it in a position of divine cosmic power.

Prophecy

In the first three cantos, the West Wind and Spring both announce the future. The storm at sea brought by the West Wind in Canto 2 is a funeral song for the “dying year” (Line 23). Spring blasts her trumpet while the seeds of life still sleep “o’er the dreaming earth” (Line 10), foretelling the end of winter. Through their actions, the West Wind and Spring both harken coming change and play a vital role in causing it. The West Wind brings the storm that ends summer. The wind itself forms a ”vast sepulchre” (Line 25), or tomb, as the storm wrecks the dreamy peace of warm months.

The speaker of the poem seeks not the wind’s creative or destructive powers, but instead its song, making his request in Canto 5: “make me thy lyre” (Line 67). The West Wind’s powers of dispersion can spread the poet’s words far and wide, across space and time. This request goes through the death of winter into spring, when the wind may move “through [the speaker’s] lips to unawaken’d earth // the trumpet of a prophecy” (Lines 68-69).