Ode to the West Wind by Percy Shelley (w/commentary)

I


O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

II


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 lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

III


Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
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!

IV


If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

V


Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. 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;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Here is my meagre interpretation of the poem:

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The ancient biblical Hebrews had no conception of the immortal soul. The spirit that gave life to humans was quite literally a “breath”. Yahweh was powerful, but he was powerful only in the sense that he could manipulate the natural world. Thus, man was brought out of clay and given the animating spirit of the winds. I would like to argue that Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” revises the biblical story of creation. I would also argue that he does so as a humanist rather than a theist (see Milton’s Paradise Lost for that version of Genesis).

Yahweh sentences Adam, Eve, and all their offspring to death because Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. Yet it seems to us that Yahweh has misrepresented what he meant by his dictum: From the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you surely shall not eat, for on that day you will die. He cannot be literal here, because Adam and Eve do not die on the day that they consume the fruit. This metaphoric use of death seems to condemn humanity to sufferings while they yet live out their lives, along with the fact that they will literally die and be no more. Thus “the leaves dead” (line 2) that are “driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing” (line 3) by the “wild West Wind” (line 1) in Shelley’s Ode may then be symbols for a fallen humanity. Pestilence is one of humanity’s greatest burdens: “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” (line 4) is not meant to be an accurate description of the color of autumnal leaves, but rather the hues that pass over the human visage in times of sickness, i.e. yellow fever, the black death, pale sickness, and the hectic red of tuberculosis victims. Besides that which plagues humanity as a whole, we find the “I” of the poem explicitly crying out to the Wind: “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! / A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed / One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud” (lines 54-56).

Shelley appears to imaginatively accept the myth of fallen man. It is a powerful trope that accords too well with human nature to be easily shrugged off. Yet he also manages to powerfully transform what the ancient Hebrews knew as the god-given ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ into something “rich and strange” (Shelley’s tombstone epitaph). The West Wind is an undirected force, a Power beyond containment. But if this is the case, it is also free of jealousy and judgment. Though many leaves may simply be swept away into oblivion by this mysterious power, the wind also allows the “winged seeds” (line 7) to fly to their spots of hibernation after which they will fill “plain and hill” with “living hues and odours” (line 12). Divine redemption being impossible for Shelley, his poem serves as a solace for atheists who yet still share the Hebraic sense of being fallen and condemned to suffer in life. The idea of resurrection is also played upon by Shelley when he uses the phrase “Be through my lips to unawakened earth / The trumpet of a prophecy!” The Hebrew word now translated by Christians as “resurrection” really only meant “awakened”. This is another example of Shelley’s humanist interpretation of Christian mythology.