Ode to the West Wind

Synonyms for Ode - Ballad, composition ,lyric , poesy, rhyme, song, sonnet, verse.

A poem that is written for a special occasion or that speaks to a particular person or thing .

It is a ode of 70 line . Total 5 Stanza . 14 line in in each stanza  . 

Rhyme are in the form of ABA BCB CDC DED EE

Question and Answer

1.  Write down the summary of the poem Ode to the West Wind.

Ans: - Shelly describes the West Wind as a great wild and uncontrollable force. It possesses the destructive as well as creative power.

The West Wind blows away the dry and dead leaves. It also drives the seeds to the underground only to protect them from winter and at the time of spring these seeds come out to germinate. In this way the way the West Wind is called the destroyed and preserver.

In the sky, the West Wind brings the rainy clouds and thunder, storm and lighting. The horizon looks like a Maenad upheavaling her hair. It sings the funeral song their flowers and leaves.

In the sea, the West Wind breaks the dreams of the Mediterranean Sea. Not only the tress of the land but also the vegetations get frightened and shed their flowers and leaves.

The poet wishes to be inspired and strengthened by the Wild West Wind. He invokes the West Wind to blow him like a leaf, to carry him like a wave. Then like the leaves the incantation of his verse will be spread throughout the universe and a regeneration of mankind can be possible. His philosophy, ‘If Winter comes, can spring be far behind,’ would bring resurrection on the earth.

2.  Write down the central thought of the poem.

Ans: - Through this poem the poet describes the mighty power of the West Wind on the earth, in the sky and under the sea. He also invokes the Wind to help him spreading his philosophy to the slumbering humanity. The port things that the West Wind is like one (like our ‘Shiva’) who destroys the old things as well as creates new things.

In this poem we can fell the poet’s melancholy attitude. He is dissatisfied with the present conditions of society. So as a revolutionary, he wants to destroy his old habits and wants to prophesy his own philosophy of life. He knows it certain that if the people will follow his philosophy a newer world will come, a millennium will come and paradise will be resurrected on this earth.

The poet longs to be inspired by. The West Wind to destroy the evils of society through the incantation of his verse, and thus a golden age of mankind would come.

 3.   Describe, after Shelly, the effect of the West Wind on the earth, in the sky and over the ocean.

Ans: - Through some fanciful and yet artistic picture Shelly in his poem, Ode to the West Wind, describes the effect of West Wind on the earth, in the sky an over the ocean. Over the land the v blows furiously. The red, weak, dry up, gray and dead leaves are-driven by the West Wind. The seeds also are driven by it to the underground where they stay for the winter season only to germinate at the time of spring. The vernal wind helps the seeds to come up with fresh flowers and leaves.

In the sky West Wind plays havoc. The force of the wind makes loose the clouds and scatters thema1/ over the sky as the stream carries away the dry leaves. This Wild West Wind brings rain, thunder and lighting in the sky. The roaring sound of the West Wind is just like the dirge of the year that lies under the cloudy sky as a copse. The influence of the West Wind on the ocean is also destructive. It awakens the blue Mediterranean from its sweet summer sleep. It makes a cleavage on the Atlantic Ocean and the woods under water lose their sapness and the bushes shed their flowers.

4.  Why the West Wind is called ‘Destroyer and Preserver’?

Ans: - Shelly in his poem Ode to the West Wind depicts the West Wind as a force that can play the role both as a destroyer and a preserver. On the land the West Wind drives away the dead, ‘hectic red’, worn out leaves from the trees. It destroys the old and worn out leaves. It also forms swelling black clouds in the sky and brings black rain, lightning and thunder. In the Atlantic Ocean it also plays like a destroyer when the oozy woods lose their saps and the maritime flowers become grey out of fear. But the West Wind also plays the role of a preserver. It sends the seeds underground to protec them from winter. The West Wind acts like a harbinger of new life and preserves the goodness. In other words we may say that Shelley’s philosophy may with the help of the West Wind prove to be a destroyer of the old and worn out customs and prejudices of society and a preserver of the goodness .          

5. What does Shelley expect from ‘the Spirit fierce’ as it becomes his spirit.

Ans: - Shelley invokes the West Wind to be on with him. Then the poet can be able to get this wild force in him. The ‘Spirit fierce’ or the Wild West Wind can break the slumber of the earth and helps the physical regeneration in the world of nature. Like that, the poet hopes to scatter his revolutionary philosophy with the help of the West Wind to usher a millennium in this earth. The poet is now aged and has los his vigour and energy. So he asks the Wind to lift him up as it lifts a dead leaf, a wave and a passing cloud from the forest, the ocean and in the sky and infuses in him its tumultuous power. Then only can he rise above the miseries and heavy burden of life. Not only that, the West Wind will carry the revolutionary ideas of the poet and be his trumpet to spread his prophecy throughout the slumbering humanity. He seeks the help of the West Wind to become a prophet to the new generation.

6. “I would never have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.” – What are the poet’s sore need and prayer’?

Ans: - In his poem Ode to the West Wind, Shelley laments for his own woeful condition as well as the condition of the mankind on earth. The above uttering is nothing but self-pity which has arisen out of his romantic dissatisfaction with life. He falls upon the sorrows and bitterness of life and he suffers acutely. The miseries of the world have crushed his indomitable spirit. But he will never succumb to it. By his new and revolutionary ideas he will clear up these woes and miseries of the world and new age with all the goodness will come. He has not within him that youthful vigor and strength. So he invokes the West Wind to help him with its mighty force so that it will carry his message to the humanity. Shelley wants to be the prophet of the new generation. Only if the West Wind helps him he can spread his philosophy and a new generation will be resurrected on earth.

7.   Why does Shelley want to be a trumpet of a prophecy?

Ans: - Shelley is a prophet, a reformer and a revolutionary. He is dissatisfied with the world around him. He wants to change this world where everybody can enjoy heavenly happiness. Perhaps here he is thinking about the trumpet of the angel to be played on the last of the world to summon the dead souls to the judgment seat of God. The present world, the state of inertia, will be crumbled down and the millennium will come. Shelley’s poem will proclaim in the tone of thunder. He says that it is high time to wake up from moral and physical lethargy and spread his ideas, and on the debris of old age, a regenerated society will come. As the trumpet declared the war in old days, so Shelley wants to be the trumpet of the West Wind to make a clarion call to the slumbering humanity to wake up and make a paradise on earth.

   

8.  Explain the idea ‘If Winter comes, can spring be far behind.’

Ans: - This line is an oft-quoted line that declares the philosophy of Shelley. He is an optimist. He knows that behind every destruction there is a song of creation. He believes that for the creation of new things, old and worn out things should be destroyed first.

Shelley has a message to the humanity. The people of this world are now under the darkness of illiteracy, old customs and false prejudices. They need the trumpet of Shelley’s message. He invokes the West Wind to regenerate a new world on this on this earth. As spring comes after winter, and with it a new life of the world of nature comes, so a moral and spiritual regeneration of human society is bound to come after its spiritual stagnation and apparent death. Shelley here plays the role of an optimistic visionary.

9. Why are Shelley’s thoughts dead? Whom does he invoke to come to drive his dead thoughts and why?

Ans: - Shelley’s thoughts are dead as they are not operative or effectual still then. The ears of the slumbering people and dull, so his thoughts do not enter into their minds. No one listens to them or cares to follow them. Perhaps his dead thoughts are compared with the dead leaves of the trees.

He invokes the West Wind to come and drive his dead thoughts, as he drives the dead leaves. The poet has no youthful vigour and energy due to his advanced age, so he implores the West Wind to come and help him to carry those thoughts to the slumbering humanity. Then those thoughts will acquire a new potency to generate impulses that will quicken fresh generation of mankind. Shelley wants to break this inertia of the world. So he thinks that only the West Wind can shake off the people from their stagnant position if it scatters his philosophical thoughts.  

10. How does Shelly compare the sparks of his poetic genius with the sparks of the ashes?

Ans: - Shelly is now burdened with years and stern realities of life. He has lost all his energies that he had possessed in his boyhood. Now he wants to incant his verse to the mankind, but as he lacks courage and force, he invokes the West Wind to help him scattering the dead thoughts that he has possessed. This is compared to the scattering of the sparks from the ashes.

As ashes contain the sparks from the smoldering fire place, and the West Wind helps to scatter those sparks from the seemingly extinguished hearth, similarly Shelley might have lost his energies, but still there is fire and favour in him to preach his massage for the coming generation if the West Wind helps him to scatter these sparks among mankind. Shelley wants to say that from his fiery furnace of heart his words will be scattered by the impetuous and West Wind among stagnant mankind to burn down the evils and to take a new birth of a regenerated and progressive.

     

11.   Why does Shelly want West Wind to  make him its lyre?

Ans: - The poet is now burdened with misery, suffering and stern realities of life. He has his revolutionary thoughts but those are inactive due to his lack of vigour and energy. So he wants the West Wind to make him its lyre to express its mighty power though his poetry. The mighty West Wind blows though the forest and produces a mighty rustling sound among the trees and bushes. Like that it must inspire the poet with a mighty energy so that he may express hid dead and hidden thoughts though the poetry. The West Wind should influence the poet in the same way as it influences the forest to produce harmonious music.     

 

   

12. Give a critical appreciation of Shelly’s Ode to the West Wind? 

Ans: - Shelly’s Ode to the West Wind is one of the grandest symbolical, myth-making and lyrical poems in English literature. It is one of the finest romantic poems of Shelly. It is a great lyrical poem with beauty and emotion and passion. It is a harmonious melody. Shelley proves himself to be a singing bird who sings alone to the slumbering humanity.

In this great ode he has perfectly blended lyrical breadth and lyrical intensity. This poem is an example of splendid poetic art. The Ode to the West Wind indicates Shelley’s prophetic energy. The wind is a symbol of resurrection like the could and of fine motion like the skylark’s expressing, however, rushing energy as the skylark’s soaring joy. The poem has a more exact pattern than is usually supposed. The first stanza treats of the earth the second of air the third of water. The fourth stanza combines the three elements in one, light or fire not being emphatic in this, comparatively purgatorial and troubled poem of conflict. Fire therefore only enters in the ‘sparks’ of the last stanza which are the future justification of the cold hearth and half-dying ashes of the present the ‘spring’ to that ‘winter’ the poet is forced to endure. The Wind is throughout destructive as well as creative, tearing at forests, blackening the sky, and in the third stanza, stirring up under-sea ‘places and towers’, the paradises slumbering I consciousness, for its purpose. Yet those are of lesser dignity then that other eternity of tragic agony when the whole concave of storm-lashed night is seen as ‘the dome of a vast sepulcher.’ This poem outdistances his other two poems, Skylark and The Cloud. As it has more prophetic and moral energy than happier revelations. In its fierce speed and deep emotions, its balance of calmness and gathering power, its swaying movement and fury impact, the poem is a grand orchestration. 

A note of personal despondency is revealed in this poem. He is under the grip of melancholy and helplessness when be utters Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life I bleed! Shelley makes use of symbolism by means of imagery. He looks upon the West Wind as a personified force of nature. It drives the leaves, scatters the seeds that will come to live in spring. So the West Wind is a destroyer of old and preserver of the new age i.e. a symbol of change. It also syambolises Shelley’s own personality. When he was a boy like West Wind he was ‘tameless, and swift, and proud.’ He things that wlien he is burdened with the heavy weight of hour, the Wind he should come to him as a saviour, a symbol of aid and relief. The West Wind is a force that can hasten the new age of millennium when the miseries and agonies of mankind will be replaced by all-round happiness. Shelley’s myth-making power is also revealed here. His myths are not mere caprices of fancy. Here the forces of nature have much reality as human beings. The West Wind is both a destroyer and a preserver. Technically, this poem is one of the most perfect and nearly flawless poems of Shelly. 

  

Very short question

1. Explain in short, ‘if winter comes, can spring be far behind’?

When winter comes people become very sad, but they should know that after the winter days,           the season spring or the season of hope and happiness will come.  From the spiritual stagnation the birth of moral regeneration will take place.