Page 157 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes Lines 23-28

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!

• The speaker develops a morbid metaphor to describe the power of the West Wind. The
wind is described as a “dirge,” or funeral song, to mark the death of the old year. The
night that’s falling as the storm comes is going to be like a dark-domed tomb constructed
of thunderclouds, lightning, and rain.
• The poet ends by asking the West Wind once again to “hear” him, but we don’t know
yet what exactly he wants it to listen to.

Lines 29-32

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,
• The speaker tells us more about the West Wind’s wacky exploits: the Mediterranean Sea
has lain calm and still during the summer, almost as though on vacation “beside a
pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,” a holiday spot for the ancient Romans. But the West Wind
has woken the Mediterranean, presumably by stirring him up and making the sea choppy
and storm-tossed.
• The Mediterranean is personified here as male.

Lines 33-36
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flower
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!

• During his summertime drowsiness, the Mediterranean has seen in his dreams the “old
palaces and towers” along Baiæ’s bay, places that are now overgrown with plants so that
they have become heartbreakingly picturesque.

Lines 36-38

Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

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