“Ode to the West Wind” is a type of poem that speaks to the object or thing in the poem, instead of about it. Percy Bysshe Shelley honors and is constantly moved by the power of the Wind and its incredible role in nature. Using all his passion and inspiration, he wrote an ode dedicated to the Wind, expressing his feelings towards it and how he strives to be like the Wind. While the ode may seem simple at first, it allows Shelley to create a deeper meaning throughout his poem through his clever use of metaphors and personification. In “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley is inspired by the mightiness of the Wind, and through the use of romantic elements such as imagination and nature, reasserts the idea that inspiration can
Poet as subject is applied the most in the penultimate part as Shelley starts speaking in first person to the Wind. The tone of the poem lightens and turns wishful as Shelley imagines himself to be one with the leaves, clouds, and ocean, with a combination of their power yet still not as mighty as the Wind. Comparing himself to the Wind, Shelley realizes that the wind has the ability to either empower him to lead a better life, or crush him with its might: “Oh! Lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! / I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” (lines 53-54). He refers to the Wind as “O Uncontrollable!” (line 47) and wishes that he could be just as “tameless, and swift, and proud” (line 56). There is a smooth transition between the fourth and fifth part as Shelley segues from wishing he could be like the wind, to simply begging the Wind to overcome him in exchange for its power. Shelley knows he is nothing compared to the Wind, but still wants to share its fierce spirit, so he can inspire people throughout the world with his words: “Scatter as from an unextinguished hearth, ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!” (lines 66-67). Although the majority of the poem leans heavily on the darker, more serious side, the last couplet ends the poem on a happier and more hopeful tone: “The trumpet of a
While Shelley is truly inspired by the Wind, the Wind in the poem may be something more omniscient and fierce, like the true free Spirit of God. Once that assertion is made, the rest of the poem flows more easily and can be understood better. The first part, while at first glance may be showing a simple picture of the transition between fall and spring, is actually depicting how life is forever changing and adapting, never staying static, due to the Spirits of God constant disturbance. The leaves and plants are metaphors for human kind, showing how religion can awaken or destroy them: “Thou from, whose unseen presence the leaves dead… fill wish living hues and odours plain and hill” (lines 2 and 12). The second and third parts shows that even though, humans are terrified of change, they are still able to adapt and evolve to even the fiercest winds of change. The “sapless foliage of the ocean” (line 40) are metaphors for human life and their fear of hearing God’s voice show how no matter how frightened they are, they can still overcome whatever obstacle is thrust in their path. The fourth and fifth parts are now understood to be prayers to God, not just a simple wish to be free. Shelley draws inspiration and strength from his belief in God and wants to use that strength to be the source of empowerment for other people
Shelley uses symbolic meaning to depict the destruction of a statue and the “sands that stretch far away” in relation to the effects of pride, a direct contrast from the words on the pedestal. The images of the deteriorating items gives the readers an understanding of time’s ultimate power beyond both life and pride. However, the cliché use of sands as a means of representing time still explains to readers that the passing of time is prevalent in the poem and related to the destroyed items presents the concept of a useless
Frost uses quite a bit of personification throughout the poem to give the sky and ocean human like traits. The use of this literary device helps embody the meaning of the poem. The first use of personification is seen in the second and third line “Great waves looked over others coming in/ and thought of doing something to the shore”. This illustrates how the waves were smashing upon each other and getting larger and larger than the ones before. The personification of the waves in line three, suggest that the waves have an actual mind of their and shall do what they wish.
In this poem, Frost includes his fear of the ocean and exaggerates its destructive power. As Judith Saunders stated that “The first thirteen lines have depicted an ocean storm of unusual force, and through personification the poet attributes to this storm a malign purposefulness” (1). Frost provided human characteristics on the storm to help prove his point that the ocean has bad intentions and its only purpose is to hurt him. Frost does not describe the waves as a result of unfavorable weather; he explains them as having a malignant intention to destroy the world. This poem revolves around the forces of nature and could be included in the long list of nature themed poems by Robert Frost.
While Romantics did seek inspiration in solitude and the grandeur of nature, it is difficult to say whether there is only one Romantic notion of the sublime. It is doubtful that the sublime we encounter in Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is the same as the sublime of ‘Tintern Abbey’. Wordsworth tells us how “… in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din / Of towns and cities” he has received “tranquil restoration” from the memory of nature, and how this has sometimes led to the realization of a gift of “aspect more sublime”, which is a trance-like state, a “classical religious meditation” (Wlecke, 158) in which he can “see into the life of things” (lines 36-49). This seems to be a notion of the sublime that gradually reveals itself through the interaction between the human mind and the objects of its contemplation. Moreover, this philosophical gift is “abundant recompense” (line 89) for something that he has lost – the ability to be moved at a level below that of thought, by the sublime aspect of nature. At the time of his visit five years before, he had been “more like a man ...
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
Even if he grew up within nature, he didn’t really appreciate it until he became an adult. He is pantheistic; a belief that nature is divine, a God. Since he has religious aspect of nature, he believes that nature is everything and that it makes a person better. His tone in the poem is reproachful and intense. His poem purpose is to tell the readers and his loved ones that if he feels some kind of way about nature, then we should have the same feeling toward it as well.
This poem describes a story told you by a passing traveler of a ruined statue of a king, Ozymandias, seemingly in a desolate desert. On the statue in is inscribed, “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’/Nothing beside remain” (“Ozymandias” 10-12). Upon examination of the surrounding land, we realize that the once vast kingdom around the statue has been taken back by the desert, leaving the ironic message on the statue. This poem shows Shelley’s ideas of how all is temporary, especially mankind and our achievements. Showing romantic values, Shelley believed nature is much greater than man and no matter how big your kingdom, mather nature will always take back what was always
The entire poem is about the interaction between nature and man. Wordsworth is clearly not happy about the things that man has done to the world. He describes Nature in detail in the second and third stanzas when he personifies the periwinkle and the flowers. He is thinking about the bad things that man has done to nature and he wants the reader to sit back and think about the fact that there used to be something so beautiful and alive, and because of man's ignorance and impatience, there is not a lot left. He also wants him to go sit in his own grove and actually see what is living and breathing and whether or not he enjoys it. Wordsworth makes it seem appealing to want to go and do this through his descriptions and thoughts, so that you get a feeling of what is there and what is being lost. He makes the reader want to go and see if those things, the budding twigs, the hopping birds, and the trailing periwinkle, really do exist and if they really are as alive as he says.
The wind seems to be a symbol of hope. Hope that he has entrusted in the form of nature. A hope that maybe he can trust that there is no such thing as a ghost that is lurking around tapping on his widows and chamber doors. The narrator looks for a way to make the wind the source of his problems instead of the potential cause that he is having repercussions from a broken
Both poets present readers with characters questioning the apparent transience of nature. Whitman's young girl weeps to see the black "burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all," (line 12) just as Stevens' young woman is saddened "when the birds are gone, and their warm fields/Return no more" (lines 49-50). These characters, unable to grasp the entirely of the cycle of mortality, are dismayed by earthly loss they continually observe.
The tone in the first 11 stanzas of the poem seems very resigned; the speaker has accepted that the world is moving on without them. They says things like “I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again” and “I don’t resent the view for its vista of a sun-dazzled bay”. By using words like “resent” and “reproach”, the author indirectly implies that the speaker has a reason to dislike beautiful things. The grief that has affected the speaker so much hasn’t affected life itself and they has come to accept that. The author chooses to use phrases like ‘it doesn’t pain me to see” and “I respect their right” which show how the speaker has completely detached themself from the word around them. While everything outside is starting to come back to life, the speaker is anything but lively. “I expect nothing from the depths near the woods.” They don’t expect anything from the world and want the world to do the same thing in return. This detachment proves that the speaker feels resigned about themself and the world around
Both Shelley, in "Ode to the West Wind," and Wordsworth, in "Intimations of Immortality," are very similar in their use of nature to describe the life and death of the human spirit. As they both describe nature these two poets use the comparison of how the Earth and all its life is the same as our own human life. I feel that Shelley uses the seasons as a way of portraying the human life during reincarnation. Wordsworth seems to concentrate more on the stages that a person goes through during life. Shelley compares himself to such things as clouds, leaves, and waves. He is writing the poem as if he were an object of the earth, and what it is like to once live and then die only to be reborn. On the other hand, Wordsworth takes images like meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being what ever a person needs to move on, and with out those objects can't have life. Wordsworth does not compare himself to these things like Shelley, but instead uses them as an example of how he feels about the stages of living. Starting from an infant to a young boy into a man, a man who knows death is coming and can do nothing about it because it's part of life.
However, the two of them differently perceive the same natural manifestations. The radical poet Shelley observes the deadly changes in nature caused by the autumnal wind with an expectation for the following spring and revival. In the seasonal process he sees a symbolic prototype for possible revolutionary changes both in his own life and in the existing social structure of his country. His "Ode to the West Wind" !
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...