The Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshee Shelley
The Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Bysshee Shelley, is a poem of spiritual power. The power is demonstrated through the use of visual, auditory, and kinetic (motion) imagery. The poem was written on a day that the “tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumns rains [Shelly’s notes].” The poem uses terza rima to portray a very rhythmic rhyming pattern. This pattern is used to describe five very distinct and different stanzas, which describe: autumn, rainstorms, the sea, man merging with the wind, and man being the sound of the wind. Shelley uses three types of imagery in each of these stanzas. His use of visual, auditory, and kinetic imagery is demonstrated in each of the five stanzas throughout Ode to the West Wind.
In the first stanza of Shelley’s poem, Shelley describes autumn and the changing of colors. “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes,” is a visual imagery of the leaves that change colors in the fall. “Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth,” is a strong auditory image of the wild west winds blowing in as autumn arrives. “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere,” is kinetic imagery, which describes the energy, and the force that drives the spirited west wind.
In stanza two Shelley talks of the effects that the west wind has on a rainstorm. “Angels of rain and lightning there are a spread On the blue surface of thine aery surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head,” is a very vivid and colorful use of visual imagery. These lines do a great job of imaginatively taking the reader to the front of the wind to see its power on a storm. ...
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...agine the sound of the wind as it blows through the trees, knocking the leaves off and their descent to the forest floor. “Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks,” is an example kinetic imagery used by Shelly to describe the awesome power that sweeps the wind through the sea of trees.
Throughout all five stanzas, Shelley uses three types of imagery in Ode to the West Wind. He uses visual imagery, which is the thought portrayed by the vision of an object. He uses auditory imagery, which is the thought of something through a sound, and he uses kinetic imagery, which is a vision of something by motion, or a powerful force. The use of imagery in this poem creates a feeling that the poem is alive. By using the three types of imagery the wind is given such powers that it feels like the reader is a simple object in the path of such a great force.
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
“He uses similes such as the breeze that ‘blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale frogs’ and that also made a shadow on the ‘wine-colored rug’ as ‘wind does on the sea’.”
At first glance the poem may appear to have no purpose other than the, describing the hash Australian outback, but the last two lines suggest some additional significance. The poet shows that this simple, pleasant memory and how it re-in-acts his childhood. The way in which the windmills squeaks and groans to bring water from the ground whereas during the period of rain they work in harmony, as the rain comes down.
“…it broke into hundreds of pieces so that the rain fell here and there from high clouds in long, curving gray plumes.” The hyperbole about the storm produces a wild sense of the surroundings. Kingsolver uses the onomatopoeia and simile to describe appearance and the sound of the storm. The first-person point of view also assists on expressing Taylor’s senses and emotions. In describing Taylor’s feelings for Estevan, Kingsolver combines them into a one complex sentence, which displays the exhilaration that Taylor feels. Most of all the paragraphs’ structure is similar, adding consistency to the passage. The consistency makes it easier for the readers to follow and understand the message and concepts that the author conveys in the novel. Additionally, Kingsolver uses contrast to bring out the mood among Taylor’s group. In the beginning, she makes a deadly ambience with the storm and lightning, yet the characters are very high in spirit and energy to a point in which they dance under the storm. It enhances the characters’ emotion to attract the attention of the readers, which makes it more noticeable just like light being brighter in the dark. Kingsolver also uses this passage as a chance to build up for a shocking event unexpected by
The first three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over the land, the sky, and the ocean and implore it to “hear” the poets call for it to perform its duty. (14, 28, 42) In the first stanza the wind is characterized as a “Destroyer and preserver” (14) which drive dead leaves and the “wingèd seeds” (7) to the closing season’s burial and the coming spring’s rebirth. Within the recurring second and third stanzas Shelley extends the leaf image to additional earthen objects thus creating an epic metaphor throughout the poem.
Many literary critics have observed that over the course of W. B. Yeats’ poetic career, readers can perceive a distinct change in the style of his writing. Most notably, he appears to adopt a far more cynical tone in the poems he generated in the later half of his life than in his earlier pastoral works. This somewhat depressing trend is often attributed to the fact that he is simply becoming more conservative and pessimistic in his declining years, but in truth it represents a far more significant change in his life. Throughout Yeats’ career, the poet is constantly trying to determine exactly what inspires him; early on, in such poems as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “The Wild Swans at Coole,” Yeats obviously looks towards nature to find his muse, thereby generating idyllic pastoral scenery that is reminiscent of the nature-based poetry of Wordsworth. However, his later works are darkened not by his own perspective, but by the fact that he is no longer certain that nature is truly the fountain that he taps for inspiration. A number of his later poems, such as “Leda and the Swan” and “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” employ symbolism and metaphor in order to reflect the author’s battle to find his true source. Yeats spends his career dealing with this conflict, and he eventually concludes that while nature itself may have been the source of the general ideas for many of his poems, the works themselves came to life only after he reached into the depths of his heart and sought the fuel of pure human emotions and experiences. Ultimately, he discovers that the only true inspiration comes from the trivial and mundane influences found in everyday life; the purest poetic inspiration is humanity itself.
”To Autumn” is an ode written by John Keats on the 19th of September 1819. While walking near Winchester along a river, Keats became inspired to write the poem. The Rest of his other odes were completed in the spring of 1819. John died on the 23rd of February 1921 at the age of 25, just a year after the release of “To Autumn”. However, throughout his life he inspired many poets, but most notably Percy Shelly. In mourning, he wrote the elegy “Adonais” for Keats.”To Autumn “is his final poem and many have said it is his best. Keats use of imagery takes the reader on an adventure through the scenes and sounds of autumn. He achieves this by his use language, imagery, tone and structure. This is also what creates the mood and consequently allows him to challenge the notion that music is usually associated with spring. Thus, in this essay I will show how he challenges this belief, by looking at his use of imagery, tone and form. In addition I will look at what his influences were and the context in which he wrote the poem.
The wind seems to be a symbol of hope. Hope that he has entrusted in the form of nature. A hope that maybe he can trust that there is no such thing as a ghost that is lurking around tapping on his widows and chamber doors. The narrator looks for a way to make the wind the source of his problems instead of the potential cause that he is having repercussions from a broken
Relief,” Millay used a similar form of imagery to describe the rain that resulted in the remembrance of the persona’s love: “…I miss him in the weeping of the rain…” (Millay, 3). This description of the rain not only helped better visualize the rain itself, but also emphasized the sorrowful and desolate undertone of the poem. Another exemplification of visual imagery utilized in Millay’s poem was used to illustrate the tides: “…I want him at the shrinking of the tide…” (Millay, 4). The retreating of the tides was easily concei...
“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! (Shelley Line 1)” Shelley takes a little object in nature, the skylark, and transforms it into a mysteriously beautiful thing that represents freedom and passion in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To A Skylark.” The poem, very unique, is used to express his emotions through the characteristics of the bird. The song of this skylark can be seen as a guide about being free from all burdens. Animals are sort of disconnected from certain emotion that effect humans such as sadness and pain. The speaker appears to a micro degree jealous of the liberty of the skylark that travels wherever it pleases. It doesn’t matter once or wherever, whether or not it's dusk (“the sunken sun”) or morning (“the silver sphere”) the speaker feels that the skylark is usually flying high above. Although one tend to not see it, or maybe hear it, “we feel it is there (Shelley Line 25).”
Shelley’s stanzas are composed of four interlinking triplets, following the principle of terza rima, and one couplet. The stanzas have ABA BCB CDC DED EE rhyme-scheme. Both poems have alliteration to emphasize the quality of the season: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” shows the kind nature of Keats’s autumn, while “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumns being” shows the powerful character of Shelley’s autumn.
In the first stanza, the poet seems to be offering a conventional romanticized view of Nature:
Both Shelley, in "Ode to the West Wind," and Wordsworth, in "Intimations of Immortality," are very similar in their use of nature to describe the life and death of the human spirit. As they both describe nature these two poets use the comparison of how the Earth and all its life is the same as our own human life. I feel that Shelley uses the seasons as a way of portraying the human life during reincarnation. Wordsworth seems to concentrate more on the stages that a person goes through during life. Shelley compares himself to such things as clouds, leaves, and waves. 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 like meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being what ever a person needs to move on, and with out those objects 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.
Second, the terza rima scheme helps the narrator to express his thoughts. In A Defense of Poetry, Shelley states that there exists harmony between the language that poets employ and the sounds that are contained in each word because both sounds and thoughts are intertwined to convey the message that they attempt to represent (763). In other words, there exists a close proximity between the sense of words and their sound; it is the enchainment of both ideas and sounds that creates an effect of harmony. Thus, language and sound work in conjunction to create a stylized and harmonious message which comes to life each time the poem is either read or recited out loud. We mentioned earlier that the Ode to the West Wind is an ode that addresses, that
There is a wealth of imagery in the first two lines alone. The poem begins: