Table of Contents

 Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind

Ode to the West Wind

1 O wild West Wind, thou breathe of Autumn’s being,
2 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
3 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
4 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
6 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
7 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
8 Each like a corpse within its grave, until
9 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
10 Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
11 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
12 With living hues and odours plain and hill:
13 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
14 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
 
15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,
16 Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
17 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
18 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
19 On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
21 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
22 Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
23 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
24 Of the dying year, to which this closing night
25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
26 Vaulted with all thy congregated might
27 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
28 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
 
29 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
31 Lull’d by the coil of his crystalline streams,
32 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
33 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
34 Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
36 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
37 For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
38 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
39 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
41 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
42 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear
 
43 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
44 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
46 The impulse of thy strength, only less free
47 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
48 I were as in my boyhood, and could be
49 The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
51 Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
52 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
53 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
54 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
55 A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
56 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
 
57 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
58 What if my leaves are falling like its own!
59 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
61 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
62 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
63 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
64 Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
65 And, by the incantation of this verse,
66 Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
67 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
68 Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
69 The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 

 

West Wind captured by Aeolian harps

An awesome recording of the West Wind is available from the Saydisc Records label, England, under the title “Windsongs.” This unparalleled album was recorded and produced by Roger Winfield near La Manga and Sierra Nevada, Spain, and Bristol, England, in 1989, using an orchestra of eight Aeolian Harps.
 
 

Red notes

01 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 by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculi[1]ar to the Cisalpine regions.” (188) Florence was the home of Dante Alighieri, creator of terza rima, the form of his Divine Comedy. Zephyrus was the west wind, son of Astrœus and Aurora.

04 The four colours of man. hectic red: the complexion of those suffering from con[1]sumption, tuberculosis.

 

09 Thine azure sister of the spring: Latin ver, but not a formal mythological figure.

 

10 clarion: piercing, war-like trumpet.

14 Destroyer and preserver: Perhaps like the Hindu gods Siva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver, known to Shelley from Edward Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, intro[1]duction by Burton Feldman (London: J. Johnson by T. Bensley, 1810; reprinted New York: Garland, 1984) and the works of Sir William Jones (1746–1794).

 

21 Maenad: a participant in the rites of Bacchus or Dionysus, Greek god of wine and fertility; a Bacchante.

 

23  locks: cirrus clouds take their name from their likeness to curls of hair.

 

31 coil: encircling cables, or perhaps confused murmuring or noise.

 

32-36 Having taken a boat trip from Naples west to the Bay of Baiae on December 8, 1818, Shelley wrote to T.L. Peacock about sailing over a sea “so translucent that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate weeds that pave the unequal bottom of the water,” and about “passing the Bay of Baiae, and observing the ruins of its antique grandeur standing like rocks in the transparent sea under our boat” (Letters, II, 61). Baiae is the site of ruined underwater Roman villas. pumice: lava cooled into a porous, foam[1]like stone.

 

39-42. “The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently in[1]fluenced by the winds which announce it.” (188; Shelley’s note)

 

57. lyre: Aeolian or wind harp.

 

69. trumpet of a prophecy: Shelley alludes to the opening of the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine in the Bible, 1.3-18: 3 Blessed is hee that readeth, and they that heare the words of this prophesie, and keepe those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. 4 Iohn to the seuen Churches in Asia, Grace be vnto you, & peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seuen spirits which are before his throne:
 
 
5 And from Iesus Christ, who is the faithful witnesse, and the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth: vnto him that loued vs, and washed vs from our sinnes in his owne blood,

 

6 And hath made vs Kings and Priests vnto God and his Father: to him be glory and dominion for euer and euer, Amen.

 

7 Behold he commeth with clouds, and euery eye shal see him, and they also which pearced him: and all kinreds of the earth shall waile because of him: euen so. Amen.

 

8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

 

9 I Iohn, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the
kingdome and patience of Iesus Christ, was in the Isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimonie of Iesus Christ.

 

10 I was in the spirit on the Lords day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,

 

11 Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and what thou seest, write in a booke, and send it vnto the seuen Churches which are in Asia, vnto Ephesus, and vnto Smyrna, and vnto Pergamos, and vnto Thyatira, and vnto Sardis, and Philadelphia, and vnto Laodicea.

 

12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with mee. And being turned, I saw seuen golden Candlesticks,

 

13 And in the midst of the seuen candlestickes, one like vnto the Sonne of man, clothed with a garment downe to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

 

14 His head, and his haires were white like wooll as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire,

 

15 And his feet like vnto fine brasse, as if they burned in a furnace: and his
voice as the sound of many waters.

 

16 And hee had in his right hand seuen starres: and out of his mouth went a sharpe two edged sword: and his countenance was as the Sunne shineth in his strength.

 

17 And when I sawe him, I fell at his feete as dead: and hee laid his right hand vpon me, saying vnto mee, Feare not, I am the first, and the last.

 

18 I am hee that liueth, and was dead: and behold, I am aliue for euermore,
Amen, and haue the keyes of hell and of death.
 
 

 

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