dead

Though I agree with cgates' comment on the repetition of unseen and other elements between Ode to the West Wind and To A Skylark, the different attitudes Shelley takes towards his two subjects alter the way these repeated ideas & phrases are used. Throughout Ode to the West Wind, Shelley's preoccupation with the wind itself seems consumed with death -- "leaves dead / Are driven like ghosts," "Pestilence-stricken, "like a corpse within its grave," etc. It is a death that promises new life (seeds are only dead "until / Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow"), but still a death and something quite different from that celebrated in To A Skylark. Instead of being represented as a dire force like the west wind, the skylark is constantly compared to pleasant and calm elements in nature: "golden lightning," "star of Heaven," "rainbow clouds."

Even in the use of the word "unseen" the two poems' respective subjects are seen differently. In To A Skylark, the bird's being "unseen" does not have the same slightly ominous and supernatural feeling ("In the broad day-light / Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight") that the word carries in Ode to the West Wind. In that poem Shelley describes the wind as a magician or invisible spirit, with unmistakably ominous undertones: "Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

The difference in tone between the two poems keeps the recycling of certain elements from being too apparent, but for me at least, this difference did not keep me from having a similar one to that which Callie describes.