Percy Bysshe Shelley
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a.) first stanza
The first stanza begins with the alliteration wild West Wind. This makes the wind “sound invigorating”. The reader gets the impression that the wind is something that lives, because he is wild – it is at that point a personification of the wind in the form of an apostrophe. Even after reading the headline and the alliteration, one might have the feeling that the Ode might somehow be positive. But it is not, as the beginning of the poem destroys the feeling that associated the wind with the spring. The first few lines consist of a lot of sinister elements, such as dead leaves. The inversion of leaves dead (l. 2) in the first stanza underlines the fatality by putting the word dead (l. 2) at the end of the line so that it rhymes with the next lines. The sentence goes on and makes these dead (l. 2) leaves live again as ghosts (l. 3) that flee from something that panics them. The sentence does not end at that point but goes on with a polysyndeton. The colourful context makes it easier for the reader to visualise what is going on – even if it is in an uncomfortable manner. Yellow can be seen as “the ugly hue of pestilence-stricken skin; and hectic red, though evoking the pase of the poem itself, could also highlight the pace of death brought to multitudes.” There is also a contradiction in the colour black (l. 4) and the adjective pale (l. 4).
In the word chariotest (l. 6) the est is added to the verb stem chariot, probably to indicate the second person singular, after the subject thou (l. 5). The corpse within its grave (l. 8) in the next line is in contrast to the azure sister of the Spring (l. 9) – a reference to the east wind – whose living hues and odours plain (l.12) evoke a strong contrast to the colours of the fourth line of the poem that evoke death. The last line of this stanza (Destroyer and Preserver, l. 14) refers to the west wind. The west wind is considered the Destroyer (l. 14) because it drives the last sings of life from the trees. He is also considered the Preserver (l.14) for scattering the seeds which will come to life in the spring.
[edit] b.) second stanza
The second stanza of the poem is much more fluid than the first one. The skys clouds (l. 16) are like earths decaying leaves (l. 16). They are a reference to the second line of the first stanza (leaves dead, l. 2). Through this reference the landscape is recalled again. The clouds (l. 16) are Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean (l. 17). This probably refers to the fact that the line between the sky and the stormy sea is indistinguishable and the whole space from the horizon to the zenith being is covered with trialing storm clouds. The clouds can also be seen as Angels of rain (l. 18). In a biblical way, they may be messengers that bring a message from heaven down to earth through rain and lightning. These two natural phenomena with their “fertilizing and illuminating power” bring a change.
Line 21 begins with Of some fierce Maenad (l. 21) and again the west wind is part of the second stanza of the poem; here he is two things at once: first he is dirge/Of the dying year (l. 23f) and second he is “a prophet of tumult whose prediction is decisive”; a prophet who does not only bring black rain, and fire, and hail (l. 28), but who will burst (l. 28) it. The locks of the approaching storm (l. 23) are the messengers of this bursting: the clouds.
Shelley in this stanza “expands his vision from the earthly scene with the leaves before him to take in the vaster commotion of the skies”. This means that the wind is now no longer at the horizon and therefore far away, but he is exactly above us. The clouds now reflect the image of the swirling leaves; this is a parallelism that gives evidence that we lifted “our attention from the finite world into the macrocosm”. The clouds can also be compared with the leaves; but the clouds are more unstable and bigger than the leaves and they can be seen as messengers of rain and lightning as it was mentioned above.
[edit] c.) third stanza
The question that comes up when reading the third stanza at first is what the subject of the verb saw (l. 33) could be. On the one hand there is the blue Mediterranean (l. 30). With the Mediterranean as subject of the stanza, the “syntactical movement” is continued and there is no break in the fluency of the poem; it is said that he lay, / Lulld by the coil of this crystalline streams,/Beside a pumice isle in Baiaes bay, / And saw in sleep old palaces and towers (l. 30-33). On the other hand it is also possible that the lines of this stanza refer to the wind again. Then the verb that belongs to the wind as subject is not lay, but the previous line of this stanza, that says Thou who didst waken … And saw (l. 29, 33). But whoever – the Mediterranean or the wind – saw (l. 33) the question remains whether the city one of them saw, is real and therefore a reflection on the water of a city that really exists on the coast; or the city is just an illusion. Pirie is not sure of that either. He says that it might be “a creative interpretation of the billowing seaweed; or of the glimmering sky reflected on the heaving surface”. Both possibilities seem to be logical. To explain the appearance of an underwater world, it might be easier to explain it by something that is realistic; and that might be that the wind is able to produce illusions on the water. With its pressure, the wind “would waken the appearance of a city”. From what is known of the wind from the last two stanzas, it became clear that the wind is something that plays the role of a Creator. Whether the wind creates real things or illusions does not seem to be that important.
It appears as if the third stanza shows – in comparison with the previous stanzas – a turning-point. Whereas Shelley had accepted death and changes in life in the first and second stanza, he now turns to “wistful reminiscence [, recalls] an alternative possibility of transcendence”. From line