Page 55 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Elective English—III

Notes 4.10 Summary

Ode to the West Wind is one of Shelley’s best known works in which the poet explains
distinctly the activities of the west wind on the earth, on the sea and in the sky.

Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 near Horsham, Sussex, into a wealthy family.
The younger generation of Romantics also died quite young, Shelley died when he was 29,
Keats at the age of 26 and Byron when he was 36.

In Shelley’s poetry, the character of the poet (as well as the character of Shelley himself) is
not only a brilliant entertainer or even an observant moralist but also a grand, unfortunate,
visionary hero.
Similar to several of the romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth, Shelley exhibits
an immense admiration for the beauty of nature.

Shelley uses nature as his main source of poetic inspiration and he implies that nature
holds a sublime power over his imagination.
Shelley’s strong feelings about beauty and expression are depicted in poems like Ode to the
West Wind and Ode to a Skylark.

In Ode to the West Wind, Shelley asks the wind to be his spirit, and in the same movement
he makes it his metaphorical spirit and his poetic faculty.

4.11 Keywords

Dante: An Italian poet; full name Dante Alighieri, well-known for his epic poem The Divine
Comedy (1309–20), a poem describing his spiritual journey through Hell, Purgatory and then to
Paradise.

Elegy: A sad poem lamenting a dead person.
Milton: John Milton was an English poet, well-known for his epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667).
Romanticism: A movement in art and literature that began in the 18th century and focussed on
inspiration, subjectivity and importance of the individual.
4.12 Review Questions

1. Give a detailed analysis of Shelley’s themes and motifs.
2. Write on symbolism in Shelley’s poetry. Give an example.
3. Is the speaker in Ode to the West Wind a representative of all mankind, or is he unique or
special in some way?
4. What will happen to the dormant seeds once the west wind’s sister blows her clarion?
5. In poem Ode to the West Wind, throughout stanza II, the poet describes the approaching
storm and the elements that the west wind will bring. Describe the storm in your own
words.
6. In lines 53-54, the poet has ‘(fallen) upon the thorns of life...’ He wishes he could be free of
life’s burdens. Quote how he phrases his desire to escape the ‘thorns of life’ in these lines.
7. In line 55-56, the poet says he used to have strength like the west wind has, but now how
does he describe himself?

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