Ode to the West Wind

The west wind is like a trumpet blowing expectations for the future. It also shows the author's positive attitude and fills people with hope and confidence for the future. -Leslie Zhu

The fireplace needs trees to burn, and the author mentioned he would be the tree. So, it expresses that even if he burns himself until he becomes ashes, he still wants to use his light and heat to bring warmth and strength to the world and to mankind. And his verses are as powerful as the west wind. -Leslie Zhu

The west wind has the spirit that can blow down the leaves. And the dead leaves can also refer the old, backward ideas and society. Old leaves can be given new life. Like the west wind, the author hopes to bring new ideas, spirit and power to society. -Leslie Zhu

Here the author compares himself to the lyre and the forest. And the west wind as a being that can pluck the strings and blow down the leaves. It shows the powerful force of the west wind. The fading leaves also have the author's meaning of human aging. The melody created by the west wind blowing through is harmonious, reflecting the author's appreciation of the west wind. -Leslie Zhu

  Here, the author wonders if the west wind is getting stronger or if he has gotten weaker. He is confused whether the feeling of freedom increases or that he is getting mentally weaker. He reminisces about his childhood when he has endless possibilities and is completely free. He felt he could feel more free than the west wind. He claims his boyhood seemed so long ago and that he remembers it vaguely. The author is plainly juxtaposing the power of the wind with his own fragility as he has aged. He imagines if he could take back his childhood freedom, he would not be praying to the west wind in his low points of life. All he ever desired was to be free of all the pain he had to endure while living in reality. -Faye Alice

Here, the author brings his attention to himself. His imagination measures the long awaited autonomy he has been waiting for. He desires to be swept by the wind to conquer freedom. He uses metaphors such as dead leaf, swift cloud, and wave to describe the calm movement made by the wind. He thinks about what it would be like to be those things at the mercy of the power of the wind. He admires the strength of the strong wind. The quote means that the wind acts on its impulse and its strength is uncontrollable. H e wants to experience total freedom drifting away from the real world. -Faye Alice

 Section III As the Atlantic ocean turns its smooth surface into chasms or clefts left by the wind - or as if the ocean is trying to move away from the west winds path that it indents inward like a chasm -  far below, the sea flowers and see weed, in their own colorful little world,  hear the voice of the west wind and suddenly grow with fear and lose their color. They are starting to lose their life. T hey start filling with fear and end up dying off just like the fall kills the leaves on the tress. When fall comes, the leaves of trees turn brown, red, gray, and lose their bright green color. They lose their life essence and fall off the trees.  - Tito Rosas

            “Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad” (Shelley 18-21)   Shelley states that the angels are “On the blue surface of thine aëry surge” (19), only on the top level of this ethereal wave of power and brute strength that the wind is as it blows across the world. Shelley is comparing the angels to that of hair on an even greater being, which he considers to be the west wind. By having the angels be only the hair, it is known that the wind is significantly stronger and more powerful than the angels, who are thought to be immortal and be extremely, if not some of the most powerful beings. They are seen as insignificant when compared to the spirit that is the wind. Shelley states that this hair belongs to "some fierce Maenad" (21), who were the vicious and ecstatic female  followers of Dionysus. Who was a power...

“Destroyer and preserver” (Shelley 14) Shelley is creating a paradox when describing the force that is known as the “wild West wind”(1) by stating that it is both destruction and salvation at the same time. The wind is killing off and scattering the leaves onto new places far from the original trees, thus it is a destroyer of life.  These leaves are a symbol of the death and disease that the wind carries and the destruction that it leaves in its wake. Throughout the first section of the poem, the wind is killing the leaves, and it is made so apparent that they are dead since the leaves are compared to corpses in a grave; “Each like a corpse within its grave” (10). But, by spreading the leaves the wind is giving the leaves and the seeds that they might carry the ability to spread out and reach the soil so that when spring comes, they can grow, thus it is preserving life and the cycle of it. The wind moves and in turn, spreads seeds as a part of the debris that it picks up. Mov...

Section III - Ode to the west wind     It then goes on to describe the ocean near a volcanic isle in Baiae's Bay, Italy. Somewhere near naples and its nearby volcanoes. it also describes what the ocean was seeing during its nice summer slumber. It saw  the ruins beneath the sea that were left over from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption that happened in the 1500s.  Light is also much thicker in the water so it looks brighter and intense.  The statues, palace and columns left over from the ancient city are covered in moss and nice flowers, quivering under the sea; T hey look so sweet and beautiful under the intenser light that when someone imagines them they feel like fainting - they're so dreamy. - Tito Rosas

  Ode to The West Wind    By Percy Bysshe Shelley 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 odours 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 aëry surge, Like t...