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Conclusion on how Shelley uses her themes in ode to the west wind
Conclusion on how Shelley uses her themes in ode to the west wind
Conclusion on how Shelley uses her themes in ode to the west wind
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The Ode to West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a lyric poem. The poem addresses the west wind as the powerful force and the speaker asks the west wind to disseminate his words and thoughts throughout the world. The speaker narrates the vicissitude of nature and how the west wind changes the ground, the sky and the ocean. With rich imagination which is the reflection of Shelley's "defence of Poetry," the poet modifies the west wind, being both a destroyer and a preserver, as a symbol of revolution, an impetus of the rejuvenation in both human and natural world. Then, the speakers complains about the circumstances of his life, pleads to accompany with the west wind and states his prophecy about future. In the first Stanza, the west wind is personified and the speaker sketches the spirit of the west wind in autumn. Those dead leaves are blown away by the west wind as if those leaves are ghosts encountered by a wizard. "Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes," the description of those leaves not only illustrates its scary color and ill-condition but also represents decadent things or old fashioned concepts which is too strong and widely spread so they can not be easily removed through the word "Pestilence-striken". Then, the west wind collects seeds in its Chariot and deposits them in the earth until they are awakened by the spring's clarion. The narrator also included the description of seeds, comparing them in winter and spring: The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion2 o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) ... ... middle of paper ... ...h which helps make the connection between humanity and nature since they both are constantly trying to reinvent themselves. When one scatters "ashes" it's at one's death and that person becomes one with the earth. When one scatters "sparks" it is these sparks that create new fires of creation and destruction. The last two stanza exemplified Shelley's definition on the role of a poet. He argues that "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of anotherand of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination." In the "Ode to the west wind," he acts accomplished his goal by representing the pain and pleasure of human and even nature. He resorts to imagination in order to accomplish his goal and full exemplified his role as a poet.
In John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, he uses diction and figurative speech to depict the beautiful autumn season to show how inspiring and uplifting nature is to man. Updike chooses autumn as the season to set his story in because generally, it is the season that has the most vivid vibrant colors in nature such as the ripe apples which are described as “red fish in the nets (limbs)”. (Line 3) Updike paints the picture of the beauty of nature with the simile about the apples to show the reader what a powerful effect nature has on man. Updike goes on to discuss the elm trees that were “swaying in the sky” (Line 7) and the “dramatic straggling v’s” of geese. Updike uses these descriptive portrayals of na...
The diction surrounding this alteration enhances the change in attitude from self-loath to outer-disgust, such as in lines 8 through 13, which read, “The sky/ was dramatic with great straggling V’s/ of geese streaming south, mare’s tails above them./ Their trumpeting made us look up and around./ The course sloped into salt marshes,/ and this seemed to cause the abundance of birds.” No longer does he use nature as symbolism of himself; instead he spills blame upon it and deters it from himself. The diction in the lines detailing the new birds he witnesses places nature once more outside of his correlation, as lines 14 through 18 read, “As if out of the Bible/ or science fiction,/ a cloud appeared, a cloud of dots/ like iron filings, which a magnet/ underneath the paper
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
...here are similar aspects to each writer's experience. Engaging the imagination, Ramond, Wordsworth and Shelley have experienced a kind of unity; conscious of the self as the soul they are simultaneously aware of 'freedoms of other men'. I suggested in the introduction that the imagination is a transition place wherein words often fail but the experience is intensified, even understood by the traveler. For all three writers the nature of the imagination has, amazingly, been communicable. Ramond and Wordsworth are able to come to an articulate conclusion about the effects imagination has on their perceptions of nature. Shelley, however, remains skeptical about the power of the imaginative process. Nonetheless, Shelley's experience is as real, as intense as that of Ramond and Wordsworth.
“We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two
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
Walt Whitman’s hard childhood influenced his work greatly, he was an uneducated man but he managed to become one of the most known poets. Whitman changed poetry through his work and is now often called the father of free verse. Especially through Leaves of Grass he expressed his feelings and sexuality to world and was proud of it. He had a different view at life, his hard childhood, and his sexuality that almost no one understood made him introduce a new universal theme to the world. Almost all critics agree that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and innovative poet. Karl Shapiro says it best, “The movement of his verses is the sweeping movement of great currents of living people with general government and state”.
Whitman establishes a direct connection between the lyrical and the reader to get to each one of us. The power that the poem has and having Whitman writing it, rests on the ability of the author to separate himself amongst thousands, almost as a wonderful schizophrenia which allows you to view the world from certain points of view and understand it better than anyone.
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.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
The poem has set a certain theme and tone but no definite rhyme. In this poem, the poet explores into a thought of the self, the all-encompassing "I," sexuality, democracy, the human body, and what it means to live in the modern world. He addresses that the human body is sacred and every individual human is divine. Hence, Whitman was known for writing poems about individualism, democracy, nature, and war.
Many famous writers have careers spanning over decades, though one English Romantic poet was able to achieve fame in his short career of only five years. John Keats was a poet with a remarkable ability to perceive the world around him; an ability that resonated throughout his works. Although John Keats lived an unfortunately short life, he is considered one of the most important figures of the English Romantic movement because of his use of Romantic literary devices and themes of love and loss in poems such as "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be."
where they lie cold and low/ Each like a corpse within its grave, until/ Thine
Unlike the neoclassical writers who favored the safe and calm nature of pastures and meadows, Shelley favored the dark unpredictable and intimidating side of nature. For this reason he wrote about the west wind (autumn wind) in his poem Ode to the West Wind. The west wind comes after the summer time and announces the coming of autumn and then goes into the winter. The wind is violent and dark; it harkens death and suggest the upcoming winter. It’s not a happy wind. This violent wind is something that would have been feared by neoclassical writers and would have never been written about. Since Romantics didn’t like to use rhyming couplets, Shelley wrote Ode to the West Wind as a lyrical Ode. It consist of 14 lines and follows the rhyme scheme of aba bcb cdc ded ee. Shelley writes a lot about melancholy in Ode to the West Wind a trait commonly found in Romantic writers. He expresses his growing sadness and unhappiness throughout the poem. Romantic writers were fascinated with the idea of Revolution, because the American Revolution had just occurred and the French Revolution was an ongoing event. In Ode to the West Wind some ideas of revolution can be seen, where Shelley is praising the wind for being different and going
Shelley does not wish to allow the reader to forget about the atmosphere of the previous stanzas so he continues to use the images of the “the wave, a leaf, [and] a cloud” (l. 48) that existed with the “wind” to now exist with the speaker. Shelley sees himself as one with the “wind”. He knows he cannot do this because it is impossible for someone to disregard all they have learned and enter a new world of innocence. It is noticeable that stanza four sounds like a confession or prayer of the poet. It seems very impersonal as it does not address God. This version of Shelley understands his “closedness in life” (MacEachen.) and the way...