Each of the poem's five stanzas contains a sonnet with a closing couplet. It is written in iambic pentameter in terza rima formation. The rhyming pattern follows the form aba bcb cdc ded ee. According to Shelley's note, "this poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions." It was written in the autumn of 1819 and published the following year. It is clear from the flamboyant language used in the opening lines of the poem that Shelley is not just writing about the seasons or the weather. The themes of the poem are Shelley's own fear that he is losing his abilities as a poet, his belief in political reform and social justice and his spiritual emptiness. Shelley was still reeling after the Peterloo massacre when he wrote this poem and the forces of nature used as imagery reflect the strength of his feelings.
The poem begins with a vivid description of the wind and the importance of this imagery is emphasised by the alliteration, "WILD West Wind" and indeed the title of the poem. The capitalisation of West Wind again underlines the importance of this aspect of nature and even suggests personification or the divine. In Greek and Latin the words for wind, inspiration, soul, and spirit are all related. Shelley is using the West Wind to symbolise an inspiring spiritual power that moves everywhere and affects everything. He continues by describing the wind as the "breath of Autumn's being...
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...le of this poem suggests that Shelley may indeed be preaching to the unconverted and using poetry as political propaganda.
Throughout the poem there is close observation of wind, water, wood, cloud and sky. The imagery is scientific, mythical and biblical which combine to form a very powerful setting. Shelley is using the natural to portray the social. The wind symbolises the force of renewal in nature and the change needed for political reform and to restructure society. As the destruction of the autumn wind indicates the end of summer, so the changes necessary to bring about a fairer society will be destructive at first too.
Bibliography
Owens, W. R. (ed) and Johnson, H. (ed), Romantic Writings: An Anthology (2000) The Open University
The Open University (2002) A210 Approaching Literature: Approaching Poetry, Milton Keynes, The Open University
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
Frost uses quite a bit of personification throughout the poem to give the sky and ocean human like traits. The use of this literary device helps embody the meaning of the poem. The first use of personification is seen in the second and third line “Great waves looked over others coming in/ and thought of doing something to the shore”. This illustrates how the waves were smashing upon each other and getting larger and larger than the ones before. The personification of the waves in line three, suggest that the waves have an actual mind of their and shall do what they wish.
In this poem, Frost includes his fear of the ocean and exaggerates its destructive power. As Judith Saunders stated that “The first thirteen lines have depicted an ocean storm of unusual force, and through personification the poet attributes to this storm a malign purposefulness” (1). Frost provided human characteristics on the storm to help prove his point that the ocean has bad intentions and its only purpose is to hurt him. Frost does not describe the waves as a result of unfavorable weather; he explains them as having a malignant intention to destroy the world. This poem revolves around the forces of nature and could be included in the long list of nature themed poems by Robert Frost.
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.
G. Ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. New York: Norton, 2000. Barth, Robert J. Romanticism and transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Religious Imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Nims, John . “Love Poem”. Literature to go. Ed. Meyer, Michael. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print.
King George is “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying”; the princes have become cold and selfish draining their country dry, fighting for the throne; the people are starving, depressed, and their crops are failing; the army and church are consumed with greed and takes from its own people; the laws remain unenforced, and Parliament is “Time’s worst statute unrepealed”(“1819” 12) These are all symptoms of a failing government, which I interpret leads Shelley to his last lines, and prediction, of his poem, “Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may/ Burst, to illuminate our tempestous day”(“1819” 13-14). I think Shelley was convinced that the only hope in humanity is through violent revolution or “a Phantom of light from graves”. I believe this poem warns humanity of handing its power to the one percent, especially when that party reaps the most benefits of its advanced nation. Again implying democracy is the only system of government that can possibly work for the whole when given the power of
The sonnet itself is written in iambic pentameter. The first line is a reference to the speaker, "a traveler from an antique land." Imagery and figurative language used at the beginning of the sonnet,(words such as vast, trunkless, and desert) add to the desolate and barren image and tone of the sonnet. Shelley, through the form of the traveler, describes the statue?s face or ?visage? to have a wrinkled lip, and a ?sneer of cold command.? This describes a negative aspect towards the tyrannical figure. Shelley himself was against tyranny, as that is obvious in his poem here (...
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
Even though both John Keats’s “To Autumn” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” are about the same season, they are very dissimilar. Keats’s poem concentrates on the creating power of autumn, and makes it seem a gentle season, while in Shelley’s poem death is a repeating image, and shows autumn’s destroying power.
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.
Thus, the speaker of the poem is not only acknowledging the dual aspect of nature, but it is also acknowledging their own dual aspect. Further examples of this duality lie in England in 1819, when Shelley made reference to the Peterloo Massacre, an event that displays the destructive power of mankind over their own kind. Contrary to Hymn to Intellectual Beauty which displays the creative and inventive power of the human mind for constructive purposes. Turning back to the Ode to the West Wind, in the same last couplet the words: everywhere /ˈevrēˌ(h)wer/, destroyer /dəˈstroiər/ and preserver /prəˈzərvər/, they create the sound effect of harmony and musicality considering that they are three syllabic words that all rhyme in the last syllable [3:r]. It is the creativity of the poet to select the right words to convey their thoughts what makes this last couplet a strong conclusion for stanza one. Collins suggests that the Ode to the West Wind “is the voice of the poet attempting to make itself heard (8). In addition to the closing interjection demanding the wind to hear the speaker’s invocation: “hear, O hear!” (15), which seems like a plea to appeal the
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them.
To conclude, William Wordsworth uses form and syntax and figurative language to stress on his mental journey, and to symbolize the importance of the beauty and peace of nature. In my opinion, the poet might have written this poem to show his appreciation towards nature. The poem has a happy mood especially when the poet is discussing the daffodils. In this poem the daffodils are characterized as more than flowers, but as humans “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6). In addition, the poet mentioned himself to be part of nature since nature inspires him to write and think. Therefore, the reason that the poet wrote this poem was to express the feeling of happiness in his mental journey in nature.