The analysis of Ode to the West Wind

Ode to the West Wind is the most famous lyric poem written by Shelley. There are five stanzas in the poem. In the first stanza, the poet uses the personification like “breath” to help describe the wet wind scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds, here the poet gives us a image that the west wind is “destroyer and preserver”. In the next two stanzas, the poet describes how the west wind conquers the sea and the sky, we can see the west wind’s great power. In the last two stanzas, the poet expresses her wish to become the west wind.

From the poem we can see many images are used, such as “the dead leaves, the cloud and the wave”, and they all help to describe the west wind’s power, so is the west wind also just a image? To get the answer we must know the background when Shelley wrote the poem.

The poem was written in 1819 when European worker’s movement and the

revolution were going on. British working class fought with the bourgeoisie for their right to make a living. Concerning this fact we can see that the west wind is not only a image, it is a symbol, namely that the west wind is like the revolution which destroys the old world and creates the new world. In this poem, the poet turn to the west wind for help because in her heart, the west wind stands for the moral and the spirit, it can give people power.

The poem is a ode. The stanza used in this ode was developed by Shelley from the interlaced three-line units of the Italian terza rima: aba bcb cdc and so on. Shelley’s stanza consists of a set of four such tercets, closed by a couplet rhyming with the middle line of the preceding tercet: aba bab cdc ded ee. This kind of rhyme breaks the old rule and describes the west wind’s great power vividly.

第二篇：(西风颂的评论)Appreciation of ode to the west wind

Appreciation of the poem Ode to the West Wind

Romanticism was a movement in literature, philosophy, music, and art which developed in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Literature took the full force romanticism. England saw a glorious flowering of Romantic poetry. The poem I like most is Ode to the West Wind, which was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. He is a famous English poet with enthusiasm and is well-known to the world mainly for Ode to the West Wind.

The poem can be divided in two parts: the first three stanzas are about the qualities of the “Wind”; the fact that these three stanzas belong together can visually be seen by the phrase “Oh hear!” at the end of each of the three stanzas. Whereas the first three stanzas give a relation between the “Wind” and the speaker, there is a turn at the beginning of the fourth stanza; the focus is now on the speaker, or better the hearer, and what he is going to hear.

The first stanza begins with the alliteration “wild West Wind”. This makes the “wind” sound invigorating. The reader gets the impression that the wind is something that lives, because he is “wild” – it is at that point a personification of the “wind”. In the second stanza, the clouds are compared to earth’s decaying leaves and angles of rain and lightening. In a biblical way, they may be messengers that bring a message from heaven down to earth through rain and lightning. These two natural phenomenons with their “fertilizing and illuminating power” bring a change. In the third stanza, actually, the picture Shelley gives us seems to be sweet. But if we look closer at line 36, we realize that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight, because it obviously means “so sweet that one feels faint in describing them”. This shows that the idyllic picture is not what it seems to be and that the harmony will certainly soon be destroyed. A few lines later, Shelley suddenly talks about “fear”.

This again shows the influence of the west wind which announces the change of the season. The fourth stanza uses many assumptions. The focus is no more on the “wind”, but on the speaker who says “If I...” Until this part, the poem has appeared very anonymous and was only concentrated on the “wind” and its forces so that the author of the poem was more or less forgotten. The last sentence of the last part is the most famous. “Oh, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” has given courage to many revolutionaries faced with reverses, even death. The “wind” here has become a symbol. It stands for a universal spirit that appears in everywhere. And it is the west wind spirit that challenges to beak the old world and establishes a new world. To sum up, the poem Ode to the West Wind is an outstanding one which is worth reading. The ode shows us that rebirth is something that can be fulfilled through spiritual growing. We should learn the west wind spirit that can never be defeated and be hopeful every day.