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Unit 4: Ode to the West Wind by P B Shelley

Make me thy lyre, as the forest is: Notes
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies.
Once more autumn is appeal to by the poet as a mark of the imminent death, therefore, the poet
wants the wind to revive him to be part of nature. Thus, leaves that falls as if the poet could see
his looming death. Furthermore, Shelley has searched for the state of unification with the wind
to be incarnated in his soul, imploring the wind to impart him its regeneration and fertility as
he says:

Will take from both a deep,
autumnal tone Sweet though in sadness.
Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

The origin of life is assigned to the wind as it hastens the life of the seeds. Hence, Shelley has
appointed the wind a missionary post through sharing his thoughts that are buried in his mind.
As a result, the wind can use its supernatural power to communicate the poet’s ideas to people
who are busy in their lives. Additionally, he uses the image of death as a way of life as death is
the end and starting of a new beginning or regeneration. Therefore, the mentioning of the first
is correlated with the second, as he writes:
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
Shelley’s dreams of regeneration and replenishment will not be realised without the vitality of
the wind:
Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth.
Finally, Shelley finishes his naturalistic epic of life and death in a panoramic way imparted with
splendid hope and desire for spring, the season of love and fertility. Therefore, he is clearly an
optimistic person whose ambition is to go beyond conventional life to the metaphysical
achievements.

Therefore, in this poem Shelley paved the way for transformation and modification in the
English society and his people by kindling the sparks of their minds to take active measures to
change their desolate life. Hence, it is an invitation for freedom and change with the help of
individual liberation by sacrificing their materialistic life to achieve utopia.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:

1. Mary Shelley was the daughter of …………………….
2. P B shelly wrote …………………… an elegy for his friend Keats.
3. William Wordsworth, William Blake and …………………… are called older generation
Romantic poets.
4. The rhyming scheme …………………… is used in Ode to the West Wind.
5. …………………… is the author of the Divine Comedy.

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