‘Ode to the West Wind’
‘Ode to the West Wind’,a poem by P. B. Shelley , ‘chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence’ in Oct. 1819 , published 1820 .
The ode is a passionate invocation to the spirit of the West Wind, both ‘Destroyer and Preserver’. It is composed in five sweeping stanzaic movements, each taking the form of a sonnet, but with complex musical patterns of internal rhyme and run-on lines, culminating in a breathless series of cries or questions. The symbolism is rich. The Wind is the seasonal force of renewal in Nature; it is also the power that produces self-sacrifice (even self-destruction) in personal life; the ‘unextinguished’ political hopes that drive continually over the ‘unawakened Earth’; and the very passion of the ideal—aspiration, creativity—itself. Shelley's minute observations of wind, water, wood, cloud, and sky combine imagery which is simultaneously scientific, mythical, and even biblical....
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