A Close Reading of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

Composed in October of 1816, Ode to the West Wind encapsulates one man’s struggle to communicate with the divine presence he senses in the physical world. By the end of the poem, it is readily apparent that this man is the poet himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley designates the first three of the total five sections to describing the nature of the divine force he senses, metaphorically represented by the West wind. In a emotionally charged transition, Shelley incorporates his position as the poet into the latter sections of the poem to the extent that the poem ceases to be a reverence for an omnipotent and elusive life-force, and becomes a lament for the separation of man from the divine forces of nature, and a plea for heightened personal power.

The specific identity of the wind as a West Wind is an important initial detail because it is indicative of the poet’s state of suffering and confusion with regard to his understanding of the supernatural force at work around him. As is explained in the very first line of the poem, the westerly wind is the “breath of autumn’s being.” (line 1) This wind is responsible for driving the dead leaves from the trees, “like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence stricken-multitudes.” (lines 2-5) Most importantly, the West Wind instigates winter. By speaking to the autumn wind, that “chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow,” (lines 6-9) the poet is calling upon a force which is associated with unpleasant characteristics of winter, like coldness and decomposition.

That the poet is not beseeching a calmer, more benign wind suggests that he has knowledge of the awesome, and sometimes cruel, power of the forces of the physical world. The poet’s desire to summon the wind which preempts a time of suffering can be seen as an acknowledgement of the arduous, trying side of the natural world. Shelley here joins earlier Romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth, in his effort to describe the sublime quality of the natural world. By not simply requesting the pleasant wind of spring, the poet is casting aside the picturesque in nature for the sublime, having been enraptured by its presentation of power.

However, though the particular identity of the wind, as a West wind, does allow for some insight into the poet’s personal attempt to understand the transcendent elements of the natural world, it is mentioned merely once in the entirety of the poem. After its initial usage in the first line, the west wind is referred to only through the archaic pronoun “thou,” or the word “spirit.” It is not by haphazard selection that “thou” replaces the more specific title of West Wind. In losing its specificity of address with the adoption of “thou,” the subject of the poem gains a divine element with its connection to the term of address frequently used in prayers or hymns.

This divine element is introduced in the second line of the poem when the wind is dubbed an “unseen presence.” The term “presence” brings the wind far away from its obvious status as a natural movement of air, and likens it to a being with the ability to make decisions, and perhaps even a deity. The metaphor of the wind as representative of an intangible, divine force much greater than true wind is readily accessible to the reader, and the transparency of this metaphor suggests that the communication of the mere existence of this force it is not the overarching point Shelley proclaims in this poem. However, before he risks voicing his true desire, Shelley details the characteristics of the spirit being directly addressed, giving the reader insight into the nature of the presence targeted in his ode.

The poet in the second and third sections describes other areas of the world into which the spirit’s immense power reaches. Calling attention to the extent of the spirit’s dark force, the poet calls the wind, “Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher.” (lines 23-25) In the third section, the poet describes, “Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams.” The fierce wind here continues its destruction, and the “sapless foliage of the ocean” is said to “know thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves-oh hear!” (lines 40-42) In both of these sections, the poet stays true to the identity of the wind as being an autumn wind, one that brings about harsh change and destruction. While his language, in its descriptions of the damage triggered by this wind as it tears natural beings away from summer bliss, could be seen as accusatory, as the poem progresses it becomes clear that actually it is full of reverence.

As much as these examples clarify the complicated divine spirit, Shelley perhaps best describes it in the concluding stanza of the first section of the poem where he exclaims, “Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere.” (line 12) The degradation of descriptive language which occurs here, with the use of the word “everywhere” to describe the reach of the spirit’s influence, echoes the words of poet William Wordsworth in his famous composition, Tintern Abbey, which Shelley was known to regard highly. (Wu, 820) Like Wordsworth’s pantheistic life-force which affected the life of all “things,” Shelley’s wind spirit has comparable scope, which lends it to a comparable level of inexpressibility. (see Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 49)

By the fourth section, Shelley’s greater point, whose presence was intimated early on with the transparency of the wind metaphor, emerges. The poet’s presence in these lines is much more explicit, and it begins to overtake the wind as the primary focus of the poem. Incorporating himself openly in the first person, Shelley writes, “If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;” (lines 43-44) With this shift of focus, the poet finally announces what he needs from the divine spirit he is addressing. Pleading, “Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” the poet begs to be moved by the spirit, psychologically speaking, rather than physically. (line 53)

There is an element of palpable desperation in the narrative voice that accompanies the metamorphoses of the poem from a straightforward ode to a poem primarily about the poet himself. The poet is not writing to the spirit to arbitrarily exalt it, but because he needs something from it in return. This desperation is subtly evident in the repeated concluding words of the first three sections: “oh hear!” To end with these words is to beg the wind, the unseen presence, to listen to him, and consider what he is saying. All subtlety is lost in the final two sections. Exclaiming, “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,” the poet reaches the climax of his desperation. (lines 54-56) Wanting urgently to be as easily moved by the spirit, as are the leaves and clouds, but not knowing how to be, the poet is stuck. He senses the greater life-force, and is on the brink of discovery, but a burden is keeping him from being as free as the spirit given form in the wind. It is as though the very act of thinking has isolated the poet from the world of natural beings, which are, unlike the poet, effortlessly affected and lifted by the powerful spirit.

Growing ever bolder, in the fifth stanza the poet compounds his ardent desire to be “one too like thee,” meaning one like the wind, the divine spirit in all its omnipotence. (line 56) “Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!,” Shelley writes. (lines 61-62) And further still, “Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!” (lines 66-67) Shelley sees the poet as the medium through which the truth and meaning of the divine presence can be delivered to other human beings who are without the insight of the poet. However, as powerful as the poet is, Shelley is acknowledging with this ode that he will always be secondary in importance to the divine spirit sensed in the natural world.

The final line of the poem solidifies the subtle optimism present throughout the poem that could be overshadowed by the desperation of the fourth and fifth sections. This last line, which reads, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” follows up on the duel nature of the spirit presented in the first stanza which acknowledges that the spirit can be both a destroyed and preserver. Because the poet is awestruck by the power of the destroyer façade, he welcomes in the autumn wind. But asking rhetorically about the spring to come, the poet puts forth his confidence in his impending enlightened state of being. His assurance in spring’s arrival is curious given the poet’s earlier exclamation of “oh uncontrollable,” in the second stanza of the fourth section, but it exists nonetheless. If the very act of thinking can be seen as the burden that keeps the poet from drifting easily among the wind of the spirit, thinking can also be his key to rebirth in the form of spring, which if he endures the torturous autumnal wind, will follow not far behind.

While formulated and presented to the reader as an ode with a specific, given recipient of the exalted emotion within, Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind in fact grapples from start to finish with determining exactly whom it is adulating. When the poet is first addressing the wind, he reveres its destructive power, its non-picturesque elements. The praise directly targets the wind, or more accurately, the divine spirit within the metaphor of the West wind. However, with the sharp transition of subject that occurs between the third and fourth sections, the adulation seems to remain with the wind, but actually indirectly highlights the greatness of the poet. Imploring to be swept up by the West wind, the poet is proclaiming himself to be the exemplary martyr. He is willing to undergo suffering, as in enduring the consequences of the particular wind which breaks apart summer, associated with warmth and goodness, if that is the necessary means through which to reach a more enlightened state of being, characterized by spring. Once he has withstood the West wind, he will possess a heightened level of understanding about the nature of the force he has perceived and beckoned, and being blessed with the station of poet, he could scatter the spirit’s presence among men, as vastly as the wind scatters autumn leaves.