Appreciation of Poetry
Senior 6 · Literature in English
Appreciation of Poetry
Lesson 3 of 5
25 min
In the autumn of 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley was walking in a wood beside the River Arno near Florence, in Italy. In a note printed with the poem, he says the wind that day was "at once mild and animating", gathering the clouds that bring the autumn rains, and that at sunset a violent storm of hail, rain and lightning broke over the city. Shelley was 27, attacked by reviewers in England and grieving for his young son William, who had died that summer. Out of that day came "Ode to the West Wind", a poem in which a man does something no sensible person does in real life: he talks to the wind, and begs it to answer.
Ode to the West Wind (canto I)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)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 bedThe winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer 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, oh, hear!
Cantos II and III show the wind tearing clouds across the sky, "Like the bright hair uplifted from the head / Of some fierce Maenad", and waking the Mediterranean "Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay". Then, in canto IV, the speaker turns to himself:
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 shareThe impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! …
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!canto IV, lines 43–47 and 53–54
The poem ends in canto V:
Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! …
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?canto V, lines 61–64 and 68–70
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| hectic | feverishly flushed, like the red cheeks of someone with a fever |
| pestilence-stricken | struck down by a plague |
| chariotest | carry, as in a chariot (an old verb form with "thou") |
| azure, clarion | sky-blue; a high, clear trumpet |
| Maenad | in Greek myth, a woman who followed the wine-god Dionysus in wild, ecstatic dances, her hair flying |
| impetuous | acting with sudden force and energy |
| quicken | bring to life (as in "the quick and the dead") |
Definition
The whole ode is one long apostrophe. Shelley calls the wind "O wild West Wind", "Wild Spirit", "O uncontrollable!" and "impetuous one", and in the first three cantos he heaps up its powers in long sentences that never reach a main verb until the cry at the end: "hear, oh, hear!" The grammar is the grammar of a prayer: first the god's names and deeds, then the request. The effect is urgency and intimacy. The speaker is not describing the wind to us; he is pleading with it, and we overhear.
Apostrophe works because the thing addressed cannot answer. The silence makes the speaker's need louder. When Shelley finally asks "Make me thy lyre", the wind has not replied, and the poem's hope rests entirely on the speaker's own words.
In canto IV, "If I were a dead leaf … / If I were a swift cloud …" repeats the same opening as the speaker lists, one by one, the things he wishes he were. The repetition sounds like a litany (a list of prayers said one after another), and each new "If" raises the pitch, until the list breaks into the cry "Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!" In canto V, "Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me" repeats the command, and the second time it goes further: not "be my spirit" but "be me". Anaphora here is not decoration; it carries the speaker from wishing, to begging, to demanding.
| Allusion | What it refers to | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| "some fierce Maenad" | The wild women who danced for Dionysus in Greek myth | The storm clouds become streaming hair; the storm is ecstatic and frenzied, not just wet |
| "Baiae's bay" | A Roman seaside resort near Naples, where the ruins of ancient villas lie under the water. Shelley had visited it | The wind wakes a whole buried civilisation: even empires sink and change |
| "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" | Many readers hear the crown of thorns placed on Jesus before the crucifixion | The poet as a suffering figure, wounded but still offering a message to the world |
| "The trumpet of a prophecy" | The trumpets of the Hebrew prophets and of the Last Judgement in the Bible | The poet claims the role of a prophet announcing a new age |
An allusion is a shortcut: a few words call up a whole story that the reader already knows. It only works if the reader recognises it, which is why you must explain it when you write about it.
The ode ends with a question: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" Nobody expects the wind to reply, and the reader answers without thinking: no, spring always follows winter. By asking instead of stating, Shelley makes us complete his argument ourselves, so the hope feels like our conclusion, not only his. Winter stands for his own dark season of failure and grief, and perhaps for the political oppression of his time; spring for renewal, of the poet's words and of the world. The poem began with dead leaves and corpses; it ends looking forward.
The diagram shows the turn in the poem. Cantos I–III each end with the same plea, "oh, hear!", as the wind moves through land, sky and sea. In canto IV the speaker brings the three together ("a wave, a leaf, a cloud") and puts himself in their place; in canto V he asks to become the wind's instrument. The apostrophe never stops, but its purpose changes from praise to petition.
Worked example
A model paragraph on apostrophe and the rhetorical question
Question: How does Shelley use direct address to the wind to express hope?
Shelley's ode is a sustained apostrophe, and the address to the wind is what turns description into hope. In the first three cantos the speaker names the wind's powers like a worshipper praising a god, "Destroyer and preserver", and ends each canto with the plea "oh, hear!", so the poem has the shape of a prayer. Because the wind never answers, the speaker's need grows: the anaphora of "If I were a dead leaf … / If I were a swift cloud" climbs to the cry "I bleed!". Yet in the final canto the speaker stops wishing and commands, "Be thou me, impetuous one!", asking the wind to scatter his words "like withered leaves to quicken a new birth". The leaves that were "ghosts" and "pestilence-stricken" in canto I have become seeds of renewal. The closing rhetorical question, "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?", asks the reader to supply the answer, and since no reader can answer "yes", the hope is made to feel certain.
Tip
Device, quotation, effect, link. Name the device, quote the shortest words that show it, explain its effect on the reader, then link it to the poem's theme. "Anaphora: 'If I were … / If I were'. The repeated opening sounds like a prayer and raises the pitch line by line, which shows how desperately the speaker longs for the wind's freedom."
Warning
"Ode to the West Wind" read in full by Tom O'Bedlam on the SpokenVerse channel. Listen for the build-up in canto IV, and for how the reader slows down for the final question.
Practice
Sources and credits
