St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr
Critical Analysis of “Ode to the West Wind”
Shelley, a poet of the second generation of English Romantics, wrote his ode shortly
after the Peterloo Massacre, in which royal soldiers attacked and killed working people at a
protest rally in the St. Peter’s Field area of Manchester. The poem also followed shortly
after some of Shelley’s own most terrible personal losses. “Ode to the West Wind” did
much to shore up Shelley’s reputation as radical thinker.
In “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley examines and compares two phenomena that
are particularly potent: the power of nature and the power of poetry. Like most Romantic
poets, he sees a clear link between these two, believing that the poet’s power arises from
nature, inspired by it and similar to it in many respects. Many similes in this poem focus
readers’ attention on the comparisons. Donald Reiman has described the themes of this
poem as “the Poet’s personal despair and his hopes for social renewal” expressed “in images
drawn from the seasonal cycle”. In the final stanzas of the poem he offers some hope that,
despite his being constructed by his humanity and possibly being ignored by those whom
he wishes to enlighten, he may one day be able to speak to others. Like the new life that
comes inevitably every spring, his works may be “reborn” when people discover them and
listen to Shelley’s calls for social and moral reform.
The essentials of Shelley’s plan for reforming the world do not appear in “Ode to the West
Wind.” Rather, this poem focuses on the process by which his other works may one day
achieve their purpose in the world. Like those poets who preceded him, Shelley hopes that
his work will one day be read and appreciated by an audience that can understand his deep
concern for the improvement of humankind, one that will be willing to listen to his plan
for bringing about such improvement.
Like many of Shelley’s poems, “Ode to the West Wind” was inspired by a natural
phenomenon, an autumn storm that prompted the poet to contemplate the links between
the outer world of nature and the realm of the intellect. In five stanzas directly addressed
to the powerful wind that Shelley paradoxically calls both “destroyer” and “preserver” the
poet explores the impact of the regenerative process that he sees occurring in the world
around him and compares it to the impact of his own poetry, which he believes can have
similar influence in regenerating mankind.
In each stanza, Shelley speaks to the West Wind as if it is an animate power. The
first three stanzas form a logical unit; in them the poet looks at how the wind influences
the natural environment over which it moves. The opening lines describe the way the wind
sweeps away the autumn leaves and carries off seeds of vegetation, which will lie dormant
through winter until the spring comes to give them new life as plants. In the second stanza,
the poet describes the clouds that whisk across the autumn sky, driven by the same fierce
wind and twisted into shapes that remind him of Greek maidens known for their wild
behavior. Shelley calls the wind the forerunner of the dying year, a visible sign that a cycle
of nature’s life is coming to a close. The poet uses the third stanza to describe the impact of
the wind on the Mediterranean coast line and the Atlantic Ocean; the wind, Shelley says,
moves the waters and the undersea vegetation in much the same way it shifts the
landscape.
In the final two stanzas, the speaker muses about the possibilities that his
transformation by the wind would have on his ability as a poet. If he could be a leaf, a
cloud, or a wave, he would be able to participate directly in the regenerative process he
sees taking place in the natural world. His words—that is, his poetry—would become like
these natural objects, which are scattered about the world and which serve as elements to
help bring about new life. He wishes that, much like the seeds that are scattered about, his
“leaves” his “dead thoughts”, his poems could be carried across the world by the West
Wind so that they could “quicken to a new birth” at a later time, when others might take
heed of his message. The final question with which the poet ends this poem is actually a
note of hope: The “death” that occurs in winter is habitually followed by a “new life” in
every spring. The cycle of the seasons that he sees occurring around him gives Shelley hope
that his works might share the fate of other objects in nature; they may be unheeded for a
time, but one day they will have great impact on humankind.
