Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

We had this poem in school and I fell in love with it the first time I read it.

So I read it again and again, so many times that I still will never forget a single line from it. Everytime they talked of board exams or careers or percentages, I'd open this page in my english text book under my desk and for a while float through the autumn wind, feel vicariously the power of the stormy winds, nodding my head to everything he yearned for and made it my sigh too.


There were lots of poems that touched me, that made me sad and ones that made me happy.. but this one always reminded me of a huge mermaid like angry Maenad with red hair and arrogant chin, skin- like ripe sunshine, golden; rising from the sea; along with all that wet hair as deep grey stroms and angry winds blew about her.

It made me feel first a little sad, then a little enchanted, and then a surge of power and then sweet as if lost in love as though the love was nought but a dream and the eyes still remain closed for the last sweetness of the love's touch remains as a smile on your face pierces the dream and just gently touches reality as if a tangent would touch a sphere just at one sweet point through face; and then he asked me to open my eyes and yearn along with him for ever having to wake up to knowing that I am seperate from the wind..and I felt it just as he intended, I too wanted to float, soar and gush. Atlast, he made me feel through all those class rooms full of people who would not listen to him, like I was the only one who could hear his secret. Who could feel the chains on his hands and all those constraints binding, physically, metaphorically.. he told me to never forget him. To never stop something free.

Never to try. For in freedom lies naturality and that chaos is a form of beauty unforgettably beautiful by it's sheer individuality.

Ode to the West Wind


I

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,


Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed


The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow


Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:


Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!



II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,


Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head


Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge


Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might


Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!


III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,


Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,


All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers


Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know


Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!


IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share


The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be


The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven


As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!


A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.


V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies


Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!


Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,


Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth


The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?


Percy Bysshe Shelley

You do like it, right? I mean, how can anyone not?