O west wind you ,who is the essence of autumn ,blow the withered dead leaves away .... Just like spirits flee from a sorcerer. Leaves of every colour , millions that are diseased and withered … you take them and bury them in the snow … just like you bury all the evil things of the world. Winged seeds that have the power to germinate, lie cold and low in their graves of snow. As soon as your sister, the gentle breeze of spring , blows her clarion, the slumbering earth awakes and is filled with colours and fragrances of life. O untamed west wind, you move everywhere with no direction. You destroy life as well as preserve them when you help the seeds to re-germinate. As a stream you blow over the sky and make the loose clouds of the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean fall onto your surface . These clouds will lead to rainfall. The line between the sky and the stormy sea is indistinguishable and the whole space from the horizon to the zenith is covered with trailing storm and clouds. Clouds are the messenger of rain and lightning, spread on your blue surface that keeps moving. These two phenomena with their “fertilizing and illuminating power” bring about a change. Locks of the wildly flying hair of Maenad are compared to the lightning from the horizon to the zenith indicating the approaching storm. A year is filled with various political, social, emotional, and personal instabilities. Now you are like a funeral song to the grave of the dying year of all political, social and emotional problems; and to which this night made of rain, lightning, thunder and storm will be the tombstone. From your solid atmosphere black rain, fire and hail will burst. You have awakened the slumbering Mediterranean from its summer dreams which was lulled into sleep by the melodious sound of its own streams’ flowing water. It can be located beside a volcanic island in Baiae’s bay ( at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples) and you saw the old-drowned palaces in your sleep, when the day is bright enough to reflect those monuments. You are fully covered with gentle moss and flowers that are very beautiful which gives pleasure to my inner sight. When you blow over the Atlantic ocean, it divides itself into chasms to give way. While the sapless sea plants and slimy woods hearing your voice tremble with fear and spoil themselves. Make me a dead leaf, a cloud, or a wave and let me share your force that is more than any emotion. If I was in my boyhood I could be a companion of your wanderings and I surely would have outrun you. But I know it is impossible for me to leave out all my experiences behind and enter a world of innocence. So now I pray to you in my hour of need to lift from all my problems though I know you cannot remove my experiences. The only chance I see for my wish to come true is by pain or death as it will lead to my rebirth. So I fall on the thorns of my experiences and bleed. A heavy chain binds around me due to the weight of hours of my life. The chain has bowed a person similar to you – tame less, swift and proud. You blow through me and make me your lyre like you blow through the forest to create music and take away all my worries and fears. But this time the autumnal tone created by you with your mighty harmonies will be sweet as well as a bit sad because we are striving for a change. The autumnal tone you have created through me should be the process through which you will scatter my revolutionary thoughts ,like dead leaves ,all over the world to quicken a new birth. I chant to you to spread my words that are like unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks to the unawakened earth. O west wind ! You are the announcement of the prophecy. A prophecy that says sufferings are bound to pass and give way to good times. Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife. He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included Alastor, Adonaïs, The Revolt of Islam, and the unfinished work The Triumph of Life. The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) were dramatic plays in five and four acts respectively. He wrote the Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short works The Assassins (1814), The Coliseum (1817) and The Mass (1817). Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong disapproving voice, made him an authoritative and much-denigrated figure during his life and afterward. Shelley never lived to see the extent of his success and influence. Some of his works were published, but they were often suppressed upon publication. Up until his death, with approximately 50 readers as his audience, it is said he made no more than 40 pounds from his writings. He became an idol of the next three or even four generations of poets, including the important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Upton Sinclair, Isadora Duncan, and Jiddu Krishnamurti ("Shelley is as sacred as the Bible.") Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action. Made By : GEETANJALI Xth B ROLL NO. 12