It has been said that each and every one of us experience different seasons of life throughout our time here on Earth. One might experience times of deep despondency and a lack of faith, which stay true during the winter months, but then be rejuvenated by the promises of new life and beauty that the spring brings. The poem “Ode to the West Wind,” by Percy Shelley is an irrefutable representation of these seasons of life and what the speaker does in order to ensure that he is delivered from a desperate time. Shelley’s poem paints a melancholic picture of a man who has completely lost his way in life and in his time of utter hopelessness seeks guidance from the West Wind. The speaker acknowledges that the Wind is one of the most powerful forces of nature and he pleads with the Wind to just listen to his cries in hopes that others will be effected by what he is feeling and exclaiming. Shelley utilizes an anomalous structure and rhyme scheme, picturesque imagery, mythological, geographical, and biblical allusions, and many instances of figurative language throughout his poem in order to evoke precise emotions from the reader and elucidate the importance of understanding that tomorrow is a new day.
Shelley constructed his poem in a very unique way that is unrecognizable to most. “Ode to the West Wind” is a collection of five cantos which are the Italian poetry equivalent of chapters (Shmoop Editorial Team). These so-called “chapters” each contain fourteen lines of four-three line stanzas and a one-two line couplet signifying the end of the present canto. The rhythm throughout the poem is clearly iambic pentameter, which, along with the fourteen lines in each canto, resembles that of an English sonnet. There is a diversion, however, t...
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...n experience that every individual must face at least once in their lives. Everyone holds the desire to know if there is really something more to life and once one comes to the realization that hardships in this life are inevitable, they reach their full potential and become more exceptional people than before they entered into the turmoil.
Works Cited
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Shmoop Editorial Team. “Ode to the West Wind Analysis.” Shmoop.com Shmoop University,
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The sun has been an endless source of inspiration, both physical and spiritual, throughout the ages. For its light, warmth, and the essential role it has played in the maintenance of the fragile balance of life on earth, the sun has been honored and celebrated in most of the world's religions. While the regeneration of light is constant, the relative length of time between the rising and setting of the sun is affected by the changing of the seasons. Hippocrates postulated centuries ago that these changing patterns of light and dark might cause mood changes (9). Seasonal downward mood changes of late fall and winter have been the subject of many sorrowful turn-of-the-century poems of lost love and empty souls. For some, however, “the relationship between darkness and despair is more than metaphoric (6).
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development does not get beyond the setting. …” The poem starts: “Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound” (Hollander 1). The reader learns the time of the poem’s story is dawn. The last line of the first stanza provides place: “That was when I was living by the sound” (3). It establishes time and place in the first stanza, but like the circular motion of a villanelle, each stanza never moves beyond morning time at the sound but only conveys a little more about “dawn.” The first stanza comments on the sound of dawn with “…gulls shrieked violently…” (2). The second stanza explains the ref...
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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 (...
...fall of snow and the unremitting “sweep” of “easy wind” appear tragically indifferent to life, in turn stressing the value of Poirier’s assessment of the poem. Frost uses metaphor in a way that gives meaning to simple actions, perhaps exploring his own insecurities before nature by setting the poem amongst a tempest of “dark” sentiments. Like a metaphor for the workings of the human mind, the pull between the “promises” the traveller should keep and the lure of death remains palpably relevant to modern life. The multitudes of readings opened up through the ambiguity of metaphor allows for a setting of pronounced liminality; between life and death, “night and day, storm and heath, nature and culture, individual and group, freedom and responsibility,” Frost challenges his readers to delve deep into the subtlety of tone and come to a very personal conclusion.
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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
People don't truly accept life for what it is until they've actually tasted adversity and went through those misfortunes and suffering. We are put through many hardships in life, and we learn to understand and deal with those issues along the way. We find that life isn't just about finding one's self, but about creating and learning from our experiences and background. Adversity shapes what we are and who we become as individuals. Yann Martel's Life of Pi shows us that adverse situations help shape a person's identity and play a significant role in one's lief by determining one's capabilities and potential, shaping one's beliefs and values, and defining the importance and meaning of one's self.
In “Ode to the West Wind”, death is a recurrent theme, but death is also mentioned in “To Autumn”. In Keats’s poem, however, it is clear that the creative power of autumn dominates the references to death. In “Ode to the West Wind”, the autumn is not only the brutal power it seemed to be at first: according to Shelley, autumn also has the ability to preserve life, by letting it die symbolically first. All in all, both poems show that autumn has a number of different facets, and it cannot be described by one or the other, but all.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a lyric poem. The poem addresses the west wind as the powerful force and the speaker asks the west wind to disseminate his words and thoughts throughout the world. The speaker narrates the vicissitude of nature and how the west wind changes the ground, the sky and the ocean. With rich imagination which is the reflection of Shelley's "defence of Poetry," the poet modifies the west wind, being both a destroyer and a preserver, as a symbol of revolution, an impetus of the rejuvenation in both human and natural world. Then, the speakers complains about the circumstances of his life, pleads to accompany with the west wind and states his prophecy about future.