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Ode to the West Wind Explication
Percy Bysse Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind is a dramatization of man’s useless and “dead thoughts” (63) and Shelley’s desire from the Autumn wind to drive these “over the universe” (65) so that not only he but man can start anew. The thoughts are first compared to the leaves of trees but as the poem progresses the thoughts are paralleled with the clouds and finally the “sapless foliage of the ocean” (40). Shelley personifies himself with the seasons of the Earth and begs the West Wind to drive him away thus allowing him to lost and become the very seasons. In the end Shelley’s metamorphosis is realized and he becomes the very wind and the power with which he humanized throughout the poem.
The first three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over the land, the sky, and the ocean and implore it to “hear” the poets call for it to perform its duty. (14, 28, 42) In the first stanza the wind is characterized as a “Destroyer and preserver” (14) which drive dead leaves and the “wingèd seeds” (7) to the closing season’s burial and the coming spring’s rebirth. Within the recurring second and third stanzas Shelley extends the leaf image to additional earthen objects thus creating an epic metaphor throughout the poem.
Within the second stanza the clouds in the sky are compared to the “earth’s decaying leaves” (16) and the “Angels of rain and lightning” (18) are a fusion of both a guardian and a killer. The third stanza extends the power and presence of the West Wind allowing it to penetrate the depths of the Atlantic Ocean which causes the “sea-blooms” and “oozy woods” (39) to shed their “sapless foliage of the ocean” and to “despoil themselves.” (40, 42) This compares the sea-leaves to the earthbou...

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...h “Be thou me, impetuous one!” (62) Shelley further parallels himself as an earthen power with the phrase with his line “by the incantation of this verse.” (65)
Shelley’s continuous metaphor throughout his work is still not complete. Shelley describes the Autumn wind does not just create but it also destroys and oddly is a preserver. It drives ghosts and the “Pestilence-stricken multitudes” (5), invokes “Angels of rain and lightning” (18) to fall from heaven, releases “Black rain, and fire, and hail” (28), and brings fear to the oceans. The last stanza dismisses Autumn for its successor season the “azure sister of the spring.” (9) Shelley anticipates that spring will “blow/ Her clarion”. (9-10) In the last two lines Shelley’s dream of becoming an earthen object is surpassed as he himself transforms into the Autumn wind “Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth” (68).