Romanticism and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"
M.H. Abrams wrote, "The Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with fact of violent change" ("Revolution" 659). And Percy Shelley is often thought of as the quintessential Romantic poet (Appelbaum x). The "Ode to the West Wind" expresses perfectly the aims and views of the Romantic period.
Shelley's poem expresses the yearning for Genius. In the Romantic era, it was common to associate genius with an attendant spirit or force of nature from which the genius came; the Romantics perceived the artist as a vessel through which the genius flows. For instance, in "A Defence of Poetry," Shelley says that poets are
the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of
the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present . . .
(Defence 817)
In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley implores the West Wind, a powerful force of nature that Shelley identifies with his rapidly-changing reality, to "lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!" He also expresses his almost-melancholy wish that he could be as
I were in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven (Ode 815)
"Ode to the West Wind" invokes the attendant spirit from which Genius comes to grant Creativity also. "If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear," he pleads, "If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee" (Ode 815). In the fifth section, he begs the West Wind (which he identifies with himself early in the section) to
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! (Ode 815)
Again, Shelley is asking the force that provides inspiration to act through him.
"Ode to the West Wind" also expresses the hungering f...
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...sires for the world, and believes could be possible. Shelley's poem is his attempt to let the West Wind work through him.
Works Cited and Consulted:
Appelbaum, Stanley. Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. Mineola, New York: Dover, 1996. iii-xii
"Percy Bysshe Shelley." Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Volume Two. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: Norton, 1995. p. 811-812.
"Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America." Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Volume Two. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: Norton, 1995. p. 657-664.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "A Defence of Poetry." Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Volume Two. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: Norton, 1995. p. 816-817
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ode to the West Wind." Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Volume Two. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: Norton, 1995. p. 814-815.
Shelley uses symbolic meaning to depict the destruction of a statue and the “sands that stretch far away” in relation to the effects of pride, a direct contrast from the words on the pedestal. The images of the deteriorating items gives the readers an understanding of time’s ultimate power beyond both life and pride. However, the cliché use of sands as a means of representing time still explains to readers that the passing of time is prevalent in the poem and related to the destroyed items presents the concept of a useless
6) Shelley, Percy Bysshe, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. History of a Six Weeks Tour. From website by Miall, David. Romantic Travellers. Course Home Page. January 2005-May 2005. Dept. of English, University of Alberta. March 26, 2005. http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Travel/Shelley1.htm
Meinke, Peter. “Untitled” Poetry: An Introduction. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2010. 89. Print
Huston, Kristin N. "Percy Shelley and Lord Byron." UMKC Campus, Kansas City. 20 Sept. 2010. Lecture.
Spiegelman, Willard. "Revolutionary Romanticism." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, Aug. 2009. Web. Mar. 2014. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204119704574236393080650258
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
... the heart that fed,” (line 8) he “he stamp’d” the shaped the “visage”. Shelley’s scathe theme of nature may be limitless creator of everything existing within the world, but nevertheless is still humble. Even the “King of kings” are outlasted by the “lone and level deserts.” This verse form looks to explain many various aspects, from telling a story, to a mask, to the stupendous decay within the large desert. However, reading it with the assonate rhyme scheme, the concepts unite. They come together and make a story, and not a single person could see the theme that’s conjointly inside the creating of the poem. Shelley is that creator who isn’t mentioned in his own poems, but is pictured by his concepts, which can oulive the “king of kings”. His essence, just like the sculptor within the mask and therefore the kings in his words can stay tied to “Ozymandias” forever.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. “Chapter 21: Reaction, Revolution, and Romanticism, 1815-1850.” In Western Civilization Volume II: Since 1500, 632-664. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009. Print.
Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies of the Structure of Poetry. London: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.
As each work progresses, a personal change is expressed. The first section of “Ode to the West Wind” presents a speaker —who is also the author— who seems to be intently overserving the wind; however by the final section, he desires to be like the wind. When he writes that the Wind should “Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me” (Lines 61-62), the author expresses a deep desire to be one with powerful force. A few lines later, he asks the wind to “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe / …to quicken a new birth!” (Lines 63-64) “Scatter, as …/ Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind” (Lines 66-67). In this instance, the “dead thoughts” are Shelley’s previous works. By making a comparison between his words and “ashes and sparks” (Line 67), Shelley expresses the idea that even though his previous works are dead and separated from him, he hopes his words will be able to inspire or ignite new thoughts and artistry in others. At the same time, Byron presents a different sort of personal experience. In the first stanza, Byron writes that “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, /…rapture on the lonely shore” (Lines 1-2). He later writes that when he is in solitude, and surrounded by nature, he feels “What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal” (Line 9). By using these descriptions, Byron shows that there is a type of restoring quality that the natural world can have on a person, an
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Prometheus Unbound. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002. 206-283.
Keenan, Richard "Romanticism." Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature. London: Continuum, 2005. Credo Reference. Web. 25 April 2014.
Karl Kroeber and Gene W. Ruoff. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993. Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed.
He is writing the poem as if he were an object of the earth, and what it is like to once live and then die only to be reborn. On the other hand, Wordsworth takes images of meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being whatever a person needs to move on, and without those objects, they can't have life. Wordsworth does not compare himself to these things like Shelley, but instead uses them as an example of how he feels about the stages of living. Starting from an infant to a young boy into a man, a man who knows death is coming and can do nothing about it because it's part of life.
However, the two of them differently perceive the same natural manifestations. The radical poet Shelley observes the deadly changes in nature caused by the autumnal wind with an expectation for the following spring and revival. In the seasonal process he sees a symbolic prototype for possible revolutionary changes both in his own life and in the existing social structure of his country. His "Ode to the West Wind" !