Page 165 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes him. The speaker says that the wind stirs the Mediterranean from “his summer dreams,”
and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the “sapless foliage” of the ocean
tremble, and asks for a third time that it hears him.
• The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it
could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, “the comrade” of
the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would never have needed to pray to the
wind and invoke its powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him “as a wave, a leaf, a
cloud!”—for though he is like the wind at heart, untamable and proud—he is now
chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.
• The speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to be his own Spirit, and to drive
his thoughts across the universe, “like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He
asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind,
to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.” Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard
to its effect upon mankind that he hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: “If winter
comes, can spring be far behind?”

14.10 Keywords

Incantation : Spell-charm-conjuration-enchantment-magic

Infiltrated : Gain access to (an organisation, place, etc.) furtively and gradually,
esp. in order to acquire secret information
Animates : Full of life or excitement; lively

Transcend : Be or go beyond the range or limits of something abstract, typically a
conceptual field or division

Answers: Self Assessment

1. (c) 2. (c) 3. (d) 4. (b)
5. (c) 6. (b) 7. (d) 8. (b)

14.11 Review Questions

1. Why is Nature more powerful than Man in “Ode to the West Wind”? Why must the
speaker turn to the West Wind to help him?
2. What does the speaker want the West Wind to do for him? What relationship does he
want to establish between the wind and himself?
3. Why are wind and water the most commonly described parts of the natural world here?
Why is the poem more concerned with seas, oceans, bays, and breezes than, say, fields
and mountains and wildfires?
4. Dead leaves get mentioned, not once, not twice, but five times in this poem. Why is this
speaker so obsessed with dead leaves? (Hint: maybe there’s a pun on the word “leaf.”)
5. Is the speaker in “Ode to the West Wind” a representative of all mankind, or is he
unique or special in some way?
6. The poem itself ends with a question – “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (70).
Well, can it? What about in a metaphorical sense…can we assume that every kind of decay
and death that we compare to the desolation of winter will always result in a rebirth?

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