Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lecture 10
As a poet
• A revolutionary English poet of the romantic period.
• In 1881, he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg
published their pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism,
which resulted in the expulsion from the university.
• Throughout his life he struggled for social and
political reforms.
• His first poem Queen Mab , printed in 1813,
advocated the destruction of various established
institutions.
• He composed a great body of his poetry in Italy.
• His poems reveal his philosophy and belief in human
progress and change.
• Major themes in his poems are: power of the natural
world, revolt against unjust social and political systems,
struggle for change.
• Shelley admired Keats and during the poet’s visit to his
place when keats fell ill, he wrote to his friend: ‘ I am
aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far
surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an
added pleasure.’
As a Critic
• Shelley wrote an essay called A Defence of Poetry,
and defended poetry and poets:
• Describes poetry as an ‘expression of imagination.’
• Describes poets as ‘the unacknowledged legislators
of the world.’
• Also said that a poet is the author of ‘revolutions in
opinions.’
Ode to the West Wind
shelley
About Ode to the West Wind
• A lyric poem talking about poet’s feelings and
emotions as he witnesses a storm gathering.
• Published in 1820, written in the autumn of 1819 in a
forest on Arno river near Florence, Italy.
• Inspired by a violent storm sweeping across Atlantic,
which Shelley himself witnessed.
• Written in terza rima ( inspired by Dante’s Divine
Comedy): Stanza consisting of three lines or tercets
having interlocking rhyme scheme , aba bcb cdc.
• Poem consists of 5 parts; each part consisting of 4
tercets and a couplet.
• Theme of first three parts is ‘power of wind’ and of
the last two parts is ‘poets desire to use the power.’
• Poet is appealing the West Wind to infuse him with a
new spirit and power to spread his ideas of change.
• Invokes West Wind as it nurtures – drives away
autumn leaves, places seeds on earth, brings
thunderstorms and stirs seas and oceans.
Part 1 – Action on Earth
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Addresses West Wind as a spirit
Dead leaves are scattering under the effect of the Wind
– simile of ghosts running from magician is used.
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes:
The leaves are described as diseased and in large
numbers – not beautiful.
O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,
The Wind carries seeds to their beds in earth, described
as a charioter.
Seeds are compared to corpses lying in their graves
waiting to be born again.
until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth,
Azure or blue is the color of life, of Spring.
The earth is dreaming of life, of regeneration, of rebirth.
Clarion: trumpet of change
and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
The Spring wind causes regeneration and flowering and
spreads sweet perfumes like the West Wind scatters
dead leaves.
Sweet buds are compared to flocks grazing in the fields.
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer
and Preserver; hear, O hear!
The West Wind described as uncontrollable and
powerful and mighty.
It causes cyclic death and birth of nature.
Part 2 – Action in the Sky
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's
commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Action of the West Wind on clouds in the sky.
Sky too is filled with activity.
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and
Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning:
Clouds are shed from branches in the sky like autumn
leaves.
Personifies clouds as angels causing rain.
there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad,
Uses complex simile to describe gathering storm in the sky.
Clouds are spread vertically like bright locks of a fierce
goddess.
Maenad: one of wild, savage women with god Dionysus (Gk
god of wine & revelry).
even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm.
The hair like clouds are spread vertically up the sky.
Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Calls West Wind to play the last (funeral) song of the
dying year or the last night of the year.
The song will be sung in the tomb (dome) of the night.
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
the great dome is surrounded, upheld with vapours
(like army of soldiers ready to attack) that are ready
to burst into showers of thick rain.