The poem ‘’Ode to the West Wind’’ was written in the autumn of 1819, in the
beautiful Cascine Gardens outside Florence and was published with ‘‘Prometheus
Unbound’’ in 1820. The poet is himself
in a mood of despondency and misery and says that he falls
upon the thorns of life and is bleeding. He is seeking reawakening
also through the poem and wants the wind to carry his dead thoughts and ideas
like it has taken the leaves and wants fresh ideas to take birth. This is
possible only if he first gets rid of stale ideas and thoughts and learns to
replace them with new ones. In that sense even the poet is feeling a sort of
intellectual deaths and is desirous of being given a new lease of life.
“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 wild 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 peculiar to
the Cisalpine regions.”
Nothing can
surpass Shelley’s poetic description of himself in ‘Adonais’,
as a ‘frail form’, ‘a phantom among men’, ‘companionless’ as ‘the last cloud of an expiring storm’-
“The weight
of the superincumbent hour,
It is a
dying lamp, a falling shower;
A breaking billow;”
The life of
Shelley lays worlds apart from that of Byron. His treatment of Harriet apart,
his private life was not vicious, but on the contrary in many respects
exemplary. As far as the ideas, which he
sang, were capable of application to life, he applied them in his own conduct.
He preached the equality of man and he proved that he was willing to practice
it. He was generous and benevolent to a fault.
“Life is
either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Shelley
holds a unique place in English literature by virtue of his power of making
myths out of the objects and forces of Nature. Clutton-Brock has discussed in
detail Shelley’s myth-making power as revealed in the Ode to the West Wind: “It
has been said that Shelley was a myth-maker. His myths were not to him
mere caprices of fancy. They expressed by the only means which human
language provides for the expression of such things, that sense which he
possessed, of a more intense real.ity in
nature than is felt by other men. To most of us, the forces of nature have
little meanings. But for Shelley, these forces had as much reality as human
beings. Have for most of us, and he found the same kind of intense significance
in their manifestations of beauty that we find in the beauty of human belongs
or of great works of art. The nature of this significance, he
could not explain; but he could express it with enormous power in his art, and
with a precision of statement which seems miraculous where the nature of the
subject matter is considered… to Shelley, the West Wind was still a wind, and
the cloud a cloud, however intense a reality they might have for him. …we are
not wrought upon to feel anything human in the wind’s power; but if we are
susceptible to Shelley’ magic, we are filled with a new sense of the life and
significance and reality of nature.”
Shelley started
writing very early, but his first major work came in 1811. This was Queen Mab,
along poem. It is a revolutionary poem, but there is much
confusion in the development of the story. The next great poem ‘Alastor’
came in 1815. In the same year he
produced Mount Blanc and Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. These poems expressed the poet’s
idealism. In the latter of the two poems, the poet expresses his
feeling of the presence of a spirit in nature. In 1818-19, came the great
drama, Prometheus Unbound. This is a major poem. As a drama it is not much of a success, but
both in theme and in its individual songs it achieves greatness. In 1819, came another great play, The Cenci.
This play portrays absolute evil as Prometheus Unbound portrays absolute
goodness. This was followed by ‘The Witch of Atlas ‘and ‘Epipsychidion’. In the
same year published ‘Adonais’,
a lament on the death of the poet Keats. In the last year of his life (1822)
Shelley wrote Hellas. Shelley left an unfinished poem, Triumph of Life. In addition
to these long poems, Shelley wrote a large number of lyrics. The most
well-known of these are ‘Ode
to the West WinD’, ‘To a Skylark’ and ‘The Cloud’. It is in
these lyrics that we often find Shelley at his best. ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is a great achievement-a poem in which great
thought is combined with great art. Most of his lyrics are love poems. Many of them
express the poet’s deep joy in life as well as his deep sorrow.
Shelley sets
up a humanity glorified through love; he worships in the sanctuary left vacant
by “the great absence of God” (His youthful atheism lacked warmth and in the
end he turned to a type of pantheism). Love, as exemplified in his personal life,
is a passionate kind of sensuality which becomes his simple moral code with no
duty, blame, or obligation attached. The reign of love when no authority was
necessary was his millennium. Most of Shelley’s poems are sad in tone and as
such he is regarded as “the singer of endless sorrows”, but this is not true of
all his poems. Whenever he writes of the future of mankind, he turns ecstatically
optimistic.
“A wave to
pant beneath thy power,and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou,O uncontrollable!-“
Shelley
believed in a soul of the Universe, a Spirit in which all things live and move
and have their being. His most passionate desire was for the mystical fusion of
his own personality with his spirit. Spontaneity and fluidity are the proof of his
wealth of imagination. There is no effect of laborious artistry about
Shelley’s style at any time. According
to Bradley,” The language is poetical through and through, not, as sometimes
with Wordsworth, only half-poetical, and yet it seems to drop from Shelley’s
lips. It is not wrought and kneaded; it flows.”
In ‘Ode to West Wind’, the poet begins his invocation in a buoyant
mood. He looks upon the Wind as the destroyer of the present order and usherer
of a new one. In the course of the poem,
Shelley’s pessimism reaches its peak. He suddenly remembers his own plight:
“I fall upon
the thorns of life! I bleed!”
The
subsequent thought of the future at once turns his melancholy into ecstatic
rapture and he ends the poem with one of the most optimistic and memorable
prophecies about the future of mankind. The ecstasy arises out of his ardent
belief in the imminent regeneration of mankind and the end of all evils.
He hopes that all forms of tyranny and oppression will be replaced, in the
millennium to come, by all-round happiness. The joyous rapture is born of an
intense feeling of optimism:
“Be
thou,Spirit fierce,
My spirit!be
thou me,impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the
universe,
Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;”
Most of Shelley’s poetry is symbolic. Shelley
makes use of symbolism by means of his normal use of images including the personified
forces of life and nature. He looks upon the West Wind as a personified force
of nature and finds in it various symbolic meanings to suit the purpose of the
poem. The West Wind drives the last signs of life from the trees and also
scatters the seeds which will come to life in spring. In this way the Wind
appears to the poet as a destroyer of the old order and a preserver of the new,
i.e., a symbol of change. The Wind also symbolizes Shelley’s own personality.
When he was a boy he was one like the Wind: “tameless, and swift, and
proud.” He still possesses these qualities but they lie suppressed
under “a heavy weight of hours.”
“Ideals are like stars. We never reach them
but, like mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them.”
Shelley’s
sky-lyrics-‘’Ode to the West Wind’’, ‘’The Cloud’’ and ‘’To A Skylark’’-have
all been interpreted as having symbolic significance. The West Wind drives away
the old, pale; hectic-red leaves and scatters fresh seeds over the ground. Shelley
thus looks upon the Wind as a destroyer of the old order and the usherer
of a new one i.e., as a symbol of the forces that will end all evil and bring
about the golden millennium in which there will be nothing but peace and
happiness for mankind. In the poem The Cloud,
the brief life of a Cloud has also been constructed by such critics as a symbol
of the immortality of the soul. However, there is no doubt that his concept of
the Skylark is entirely symbolic. Shelley’s
Skylark, is not just a bird but an embodiment of this ideal, the poet can hear
its song but the bird ever remains invisible.
The skylark, by its very nature, also symbolizes Shelley’s own poetic
spirit.
“Poetry is
like a perfume which on evaporation leaves in our soul essence of beauty.”
Among the
Romantic poets, Shelley is marveled for his inimitable abstract ideas, but he
is less of an artist .He was aiming not at the poetry of art, but at the poetry
of rapture. Keats advised him to be “more an artist” and to “load every rift
with ore”, but Shelley was aiming at a different effect from that of Keats’s
richly decorated and highly finished poetry. The poem” Ode to the West Wind” is
universally accepted as one of the best poems in English Literature. The
poem is remarkable for its theme, range of thought, spontaneity, poetic beauty,
lyrical quality, and quick movement similar to that of the wind itself.
This poem along with the “The Cloud” and “The Skylark”, mark an abiding
monument to Shelley’s passion for the sky. Shelley himself writes:
“I
take great delight in watching the change in the atmosphere.”
The west
wind wakes the Mediterranean up from its summer dreams and even manages to
shake up the otherwise quite calm Atlantic Ocean. For its path the ocean starts
to create cracks and the might of the west wind is so great that even the moss
and flowers under the sea begin to tremble with fear. Thus, the west wind
acquires the quality of being fearful and creating terror. The clouds are
carried by the wind to a tomb and are locked there. During this season, the
strong wind does not let the clouds gather easily since it blows them away.
Shelley imagines that the wind gathers the clouds in a sepulcher till they have
enough strength to burst forth and bring rain. Again the idea of destroyer and
preserver is implicit. The clouds are destroyed and without rain the earth
becomes barren but then clouds burst bringing rain which brings earth back to
life. There is greenery everywhere and earth is rejuvenated.
“The
difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”
Shelley
calls the west wind the ‘dirge of the dying year’ and in these words is hidden
the idea of rebirth. The west wind once again brings winter and December but
the end of the year implies the birth of a new one since December is followed
by January and the new year with new hopes and resolutions. The poet is himself
in a mood of despondency and misery and says that he falls upon the thorns of
life and is bleeding. He is seeking reawakening also through the poem and wants
the wind to carry his dead thoughts and ideas like it has taken the leaves and
wants fresh ideas to take birth. This is possible only if he first gets rid of
stale ideas and thoughts and learns to replace them with new ones. In that
sense even the poet is feeling a sort of intellectual deaths and is desirous of
being given a new lease of life.
”Wild
Spirit,which art moving everywhere-
Destroyer
and Preserver-hear,O hear!”
Shelley’s
idea of the Islands of Delight as expressed in ‘Lines Written among the Euganean
Hills’, is merely a product of an unfounded optimism
and has no logical bearing. Shelley’s faith is no doubt genuine and intense,
but it comes from his abstract visions, not from sound logical reasoning. He is
ever haunted by the Eternal Mind. He constantly endeavours to look beyond the
evil of life and chases the invisible and impalpable. He gives various names to this unattainable
thing. In his Hymn To Intellectual Beauty, he describes it as the spirit of Beauty pervading the
universe. He speaks of it as an “unseen
power” that rarely visits human hearts as an ‘awful loveliness’ that can free
this world from tyranny and oppression. Thus, a profound note of yearning for
the unattainable is another feature of Shelley’s poetry. According to Cazamian,”The
tone of Shelley’s poetry is that of a keen aspiration, in which mystical
desire, with its anguished pangs and spiritual raptures, transcends the joys
and sufferings of ordinary mankind.”
Shelley is
pessimistic about the present but optimistic about the future. He believes that
regeneration always follows destruction and that a new and utopian order
is certain to come when the present degenerate system is ended. His
optimism about the imminent dawn of a golden age is genuine and firm and his
prophecy of that millennium underlies most of his poems. In Ode to West Wind also this prophetic note
is present and present with the greatest intensity of expression.
“And, by the
incarnation of this verse,
Scatter, as
from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and
sparks, my words among mankind!”
Shelley had
a deep interest in ancient Greeks. His enthusiasm for the wisdom of the Greek
philosophers is implicit in many of his poems.
This gives Shelley a sharper appreciation of natural forms and the
theory that artists and poets must try to remove the worldly cover from objects
and expose the underlying ideal prototype. Platonism appeals to him most
because the guiding power behind the ideal forms serves him in lieu of a
religion. In ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s Platonism has found the most
elaborate expression.
Like the
other Romantic poets, Shelley too was an ardent lover of Nature. Like
Wordsworth, Shelley conceives of Nature as one spirit, the Supreme Power
working through all things “The one spirit’s plastic distress/ Sweeps
through the dull dense world.” Again he personifies each object of
nature as an individual life, a part of that Supreme Power, Nature. He
celebrates nature in most of his poems as his main theme such as ‘’The Cloud’’,
‘’To a Skylark’’, and ‘’To the Moon’’. ‘’Ode to the West Wind’’, ‘’A Dream of
the Unknown’’. The tone of pessimism set in the beginning with ‘dead’,’ghosts’,’corpse
in grave’ reaches its climax with ‘ I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed’.
In the last stanzas the poet moves from the natural to the human misery and the
mention of the hearth combines the two because hearth is seen as the centre of
the earth where the natural world and the human one merge. The poet is seeking
transcendence into the sublime as did Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey. The affinity
of temper between them prompts the poet to appeal to the Wind to save him from
his present plight. At this hour of distress the poet can look upon the Wind as
a competent savior, a symbol of aid and relief. Finally, the West Wind is
treated by the poet as representing the forces that can help bring about the
golden millennium, when the miseries and agonies of mankind will be replaced by
all round happiness.
“The tumult
of thy mighty harmonies
Will take
from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though
in sadness.”
Shelley shows no sense of history
and cannot put forth the cause and remedies of the evils he finds in human
society. He has an intense belief that regeneration of mankind is
imminent but cannot tell us why and how it is coming. His West Wind is a symbol
of the forces that will bring about this regeneration: it is nothing more. He
has never told us what these forces symbolized by the wind are in reality. Shelley belongs to the younger generation of Romantic poets.
Like the other two poets of his generation, he died young. His poetry divided
itself into two distinct moods. In one he is the violent reformer seeking to
overthrow the present institutions’ in order to bring about the Golden Age.
“Vaulted
with all thy congregated might
Of vapours,
from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain,
and fire, and hail will burst:-O hear!”
Sometimes
Shelley becomes pantheistic in his concept of nature when he
seems to believe that every aspect of nature is a manifestation of only one and
invisible soul or spirit and that after the end of the earthly existence,
everything is reunited with that one soul.
“…that
sustaining love
Which
through the web of being blindly wove
By man and
beast and earth and air and sea.”
Shelley’s
lyrics are surpassingly musical and sweet. Swinburne was ecstatic in his
tribute to this aspect of Shelley’s lyricism. Shelley out sang all poets on
record, but some two or three throughout all time; his depths and heights of inner and outer music are as diverse as nature’s and not sooner exhaustible. He
was alone the perfect singing God; his thoughts words and deeds all sang together.
Arnold, one of the worst critics of Shelley, admired his music and remarked: “the
right sphere of Shelley’s genius was the sphere of music.” Shelley’s
careful handling of diction fitting into the sense of his lines enhances the
musical quality keeping with the swift, of his lyrics. The rhythm of Ode to the
West Wind is thus exactly in gusty march of the wind itself: “O wild West
Wind, thou breathe of Autumn’s being.”
Shelley never allows morbidity to overcome the enjoyment in his lyrics.
Self-pity is no doubt his favorite theme, but in his lyrics, he presents this
self-pity, not as something to be feared, but as an essential part of life. Shelley’s
readers are never depressed because they are constantly reminded that sufferings
lie only in the present and that in future all sufferings will be replaced by
pure happiness. His despondency is soon replaced by an ecstatic rapture of joy
when he comes to think of the future happiness of mankind, of the millennium to
come:
“If Winter
comes, can Spring be far behind?”
Shelley
calls the west wind a destroyer and a preserver at the same time. It is a
destroyer because it makes the trees shed their leaves making them bare. The
west wind is called a preserver since it carries the seeds to places where they
lie in hibernation during the winter and when the sister of west wind, the east
wind blows in spring time, they start to germinate and blossom into many
different colored flowers. Winter is often seen as death since plants die and
many animals hide themselves for the season. The earth looks barren and appears
lifeless but spring is a time of rejuvenation, flowers blossom and insects and
animals begin to start life again. The poet gives the credit of carrying
the seeds to a safer place in winter to the west wind. This way it
becomes the destroyer and the preserver.
“(Driving
sweet buds like flocks to feed in the air)
With living
hues and odours plain and hill-
Wild Spirit,
which art moving everywhere-
Destroyer
and Preserver –hear,O hear!”
This
co-existence of pessimism and optimism-the swift replacement of one by the
other-is a major attractive feature of Shelley’s lyric poetry. This poem
is considered to be one of the finest lyrics in English poetry because of its
sentiments and the perfect technical construction. The poet touches on
the four elements- earth, sky, weather and fire and the transition from the wind
to himself is very smooth one and does not feel enforced. It is a complex poem
because of the number of similes and they do not appear to be enforced or
excessive in any way. The movement of the wind from earth to sky and water is
observed minutely by the poet keeping scientific facts in mind. The symbolism
of destroyer and preserver is carried through the poem; first with the wind driving
the dead leaves away to make place for new ones, secondly with the mention of pumice
isle which was built with the lava from a volcano. Volcano is both a destroyer and a preserver
since while it erupts it pours forth fire but once it subsides it leaves behind
valuable minerals and fertile material. Finally, the poet’s own thoughts are
dead leaves to be driven away so that new ones can take their place. The theme
of rebirth is thus an integral part of the poem.
“A deep
resolute mind rises above all difficulties”
The poet
then describes how the wind carries loose clouds on its stream and spreads them
from horizon to the height of the skies. The wind is the funeral song of the
passing year because soon after autumn comes winter when the year ends and a
new one begins. Winter is often seen as death since plants die and many animals
hide themselves for the season. The earth looks barren and appears lifeless but
spring is a time of rejuvenation, flowers blossom and insects and animals begin
to start life again. The poet gives the credit of carrying the seeds to a safer
place in winter to the west wind. This way it
becomes the destroyer and the preserver.
“Each like a
corpse, within its grave, until
Thine azure
sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er
the dreaming earth,”
In his
treatment of nature, he describes the things in nature as they are and never
colours it. It is true, he gives them human life through his personifications,
but he does it unintentionally for he felt they are living beings capable of
doing the work of human beings. His mythopoeia power had made him the best
romanticist of his age. In Ode to the West Wind, he personifies Nature as the
Destroyer and the Preserver, and in ‘‘The Cloud’’, the cloud is a possessor of
mighty powers.
“Thou on
whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds
like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from
the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of
rain and lightening!”
Shelley
holds a unique place in English literature by virtue of his power of making
myths out of the objects and forces of Nature. Beauty, to Shelley, is an ideal
in itself and a microcosm of the beauty of Nature and he calls it ‘Intellectual
Beauty’. He celebrates Beauty as a mysterious power. In the Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty, he says that when Intellectual Beauty departs, this world becomes a
“dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate” and if human heart is its temple,
then man would become immortal and omnipotent:
“Man were
immortal and omnipotent
Did’st thou,
unknown and awful as thou art
Keep with
thy glorious train firm state
Within his
heart.”
The West
Wind is the breath of Autumn. Dead leaves, black, yellow and red in colour, fly
before the wind, as the ghosts fly before a magician. The West Wind scatters
the flying seeds. The seeds lie under the ground and when Spring comes, they
grow into flowers of different colours and fragrance. The West Wind destroys
dead leaves and preserves useful seeds.
“Make me thy
lyre, ev’n as the forest is:
What if my
leaves are falling like its own!”
The spirit
of the west wind is described as ‘uncontrollable’. The west wind
is unstoppable and it affects everything that falls in its path. It affects the
earth, the water in the oceans and the clouds of the sky. It is responsible for
carrying them and locking them up in a sepulcher till they burst forth in fury
of rain and hail. The poet thinks that the west wind has a free spirit and
wanders as and where it pleases. He admires it for its freedom and wishes the
wind would carry him along like a leaf or a cloud. Shelley then sums up the
spirit of the west wind as ‘tameless, swift and proud.’ It cannot be
kept in check so it is ‘tameless’, the speed of the west wind is
formidable and it is proud because it would not listen to any one. Finally, the
poet refers the west wind as ‘Spirit fierce’ and ‘impetuous
one’ that acts on the impulse of the moment.
“The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean,know
Thy voice,and suddenly grow gray with fear
And tremble and despoil themselves: --------
O hear!”
The Wind
blows through the jungle and produces music out of the dead leaves. Shelley
requests it to create music out of his heart and to inspire him to write great
poetry, which may create a revolution in the hearts of men. He wants the Wind
to scatter his revolutionary message in the world, just as it
scatters ashes and sparks from a burning fire. His thoughts may not be as fiery
as they once were, but they still have the power to inspire men. He tells the
Wind to take the message to the sleeping world that if winter comes, spring
cannot be far behind. In optimistic note he declares that bad days are followed
by good days.
“Thou who
didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue
Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by
the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a
pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in
sleep old palaces and towers,”
Idealism is
a part and parcel of Shelley’s temperament. He is a rebel, like Byron, against
the age –old customs, traditions, conventions and institutions, sanctioned only
by practice and not by reason. Unlike Byron, but, he is not only a rebel but
also a reformer. He wants to reconstitute society in keeping with his ideals of
good, truth and beauty. According to Compton-
Rickett, “To renovate the world, to bring about utopia, is his constant aim,
and for this reason we may regard Shelley as emphatically the poet of eager,
sensitive youth; not the animal youth of Byron, but the spiritual youth of the
visionary and reformer.”
Poetry is
the expression of the poet’s mind. This is absolutely true of Shelley’s
poetry. A study of Shelley’s poetry is
the easiest and shortest way to his mind and personality. The fourth Stanza of
Ode to the West Wind is entirely personal and autobiographical. An analogy with
the West Wind helps the poet describe his own spirit:”tameless, and
swift, and proud.” The poet narrates the change, he has undergone in
the course of his life. He was full of energy, enthusiasm and speed in his boyhood,
but the agonies and bitterness of life-“A heavy weight of hours”-has
repressed his qualities and has put him in an unbearable state. The expression
of his sufferings “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”is
intensely genuine, heart-rending, and possibly the most spontaneous of
Shelley’s emotional outbursts through his poems.
The calm
Mediterranean was sleeping. The music of the glassy waves lulled the ocean to
sleep. It was dreaming of towers and palaces reflected in its water. The West
Wind creates furrows on the smooth waters of the Atlantic Ocean. At the bottom
of the Atlantic grow plants and vegetation. These plants are dry, without
sap though they live in water. When the West Wind blows in autumn, the
plants on the land wither; the plants at the bottom of the ocean also fade and
die.
“Quivering
within the wave’s intenser day,”
Shelley is
describing the approach of the terrible West Wind. In the regions of the sky. Shelley’s
emotional ecstasy fires his brain to that kind of superb conception which made
the ancient Greeks fill the earth, the air sand the water with gods and
goddesses who were but personifications of the forces of nature.
“Flowers always make people better, happier
and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.”
The cloud form on the horizon, gather up in
the sky and then darken the space. The sky is at first blue, but it assumes a
dark appearance on the approach of the vaporous clouds. From the distant and dim
horizon to the highest point in the sky, the whole visible space is filled by
the movements of the air. The clouds are
up and spread themselves. The scattered and disorderly clouds
look like the locks of the mighty West Wind personified, as seen approaching
through the sky; these locks resemble the dishevelled and erect hair on the heads
of intoxicated and frenzied female worshippers of the wine-god
who used to dance madly about.
“The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision,-“
These lines
are very touching and highly characteristic of Shelley. Shelley was a rebel and
a revolutionary. He had a restless
temperament which was even at war with something. In the West Wind, Shelley
finds a kindred spirit. Looking at it, he is reminded of his youth when he too
was free and uncontrollable. At that time, he did not think it an impossibility
to vie with the West Wind in its speed, but the worries and mysteries of this life
have proved too much for him and have made him tame and weak. He had lost his
old vigour and force, and he appeals to the West Wind to lend him some strength
and lift his dejected spirit as it lifts a cloud, wave or a leaf. He was very
much oppressed by the hardships of the world and he wants somebody to support
him through his struggle for existence in this world. He was indeed tameless
and wild like the West Wind at one time, but now he is bowed down by the
worries and care, and calls for help.Next, Shelley describes the agitated
surface of the ocean cuts a thousand deep passages on itself for the march
of the terrific wind; while the rush and tumult on the surface reach the
vegetable world at the bottom of the ocean, the leaves, the flowers, the sapless
forests there tremble with fear and are shaken loose pell-mell at the awful
roar of the mighty wind.
Desmond
king-Hele remarks: “The verse technique and structure of the Ode to West Wind could
scarcely be improved: it is the most fully orchesterd of Shelley‘s poems, and
consequently the most difficult to read aloud. The ever fluctuating tempo and
he artfully random pauses in the long lines reflect the lawless surging of the
wind and its uneasy silences. This device is not overworked: the wonder is that
Shelley could use it at all when grappling with the problems of the terza rima
and operating within a rigid structural framework. In conformity with this framework,
which seemed to be in the Style of Calderon, the first three Stanzas are
designed to show the wind’s power in three spheres of Nature, in preparation
for the prayer to the Wind, as pseudo-god, in Stanzas 4 and 5.
The keynote
of the first three Stanzas is balanced. Their settings, land, sky and sea, give
equal emphasis to the three states of matter, solid, gaseous and liquid. Each
of the four seasons has its appointed place, and there is a full range of
colours- red, yellow, blue, grey and black explicitly, white and green
implicitly. Turmoil is balanced against
calm, life against death, detail against generalization, cold against calm,
life against death, detail against generalization, cold against warmth, plain
against hill, and so on. The varied
evidence of Stanzas1-3 is assembled in support of the narrow, one-track theme in
the last two stanzas: the plan is sound, but in points of detail it falls short
of perfection. For Shelley harps on his prayer rather too long. His defeatism
becomes a trifle depressing, unless when reading the poem we happen to be in
the same mood as he was…the note of self-pity is overplayed in the last two Stanzas;
and this must be counted a blemish in what is otherwise a nearly faultless
poem.”
“Of the dying year, to which this closing
night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of
vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst:-O
hear!”
*********************************************************************************************
Except setting, development and
thoughts the words are completely followed up from Critical Evaluation of
Shelley by Dr.S. Sen and another book...
-Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri.
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