An Analysis of Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley.docVIP

An Analysis of Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley 　　1. Introduction 　　William Wordsworth， George Gordon， Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley are regarded as three greatest romantic poets in England. And Shelley is known for his lyric poetries and imagination. At Eton， his schoolmates called him “Mad Shelley”， and in judgment of the world he remained “mad Shelley” to the end of his life. In this poem， the poet expressed the deep love for the nature and celebrated the spirit of the west wind who destroyed old things and gave birth to new things. 　　2. Appreciation 　　In the five magnificent stanzas of the poem， Shelley addresses the west wind directly as a force that is both destructive and creative. He focused on three natural objects of the wind’s power： the autumn leaves in stanza 1， the clouds in stanza 2， and the waves in stanza 3. Stanza 4 marks a crisis in the poem. In stanza 5， Shelley discovers his true relationship to the west wind. He would be the wind’s “lyre” receiving its “mighty harmonies” like a wind harp or like the forest itself. These images changed into words to predict and to awaken a rebirth of human imagination. 　　3. Symbols in the Poem 　　Shelley’s west wind is a symbol of “spirit”， “the breath of autumn’s being”. It is destroyed on earth， in sky and sea in order to revive in the spring. Around this central symbol， the poem describes various cycles of death and regeneration， which are nature， human， and divine. 　　4. Structure 　　In this poem， Shelley used “terza rima”， an Italian measure first used by Dante in his “The Divine Comedy”. Like a sonnet， each stanza is fourteen lines long. Shelley’s rhyme scheme for his stanzas may be represented as “aba bcb cdc ded ee”. The middle rhyme of each triplet becomes the first and third rhyme of the next triplet： aba， bcb， and so on. It is written in iambic tercets. This scheme creates a sense of disordered， circulating activity of the wind as it drives and tosses the leaves， clouds， and