Ode To The West Wind

A Summary and Analysis of Percy Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’

by

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of the best-known and best-loved poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). It is a quintessential Romantic poem. But what does it mean? Its closing words are well-known and often quoted, but how does the rest of the poem build towards them?

The best way to go about offering an analysis of ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is to go through the poem and provide a part-by-part summary, pointing out some of the most important features of Shelley’s poem. So, here goes…

Read more

‘Ode to the West Wind’: A Poem by Percy Shelley

by

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Written in 1819 during a turbulent time in English history – the Peterloo Massacre, which Percy Shelley (1792-1822) also wrote about in his poem ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, deeply affected the poet – ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of Shelley’s best-known poems. The west wind is the wind that would carry Shelley back from Florence (where he was living at the time) to England, where he wanted to help fight for reform and revolution. The west wind thus becomes, before Harold Macmillan, a ‘wind of change’.

Ode to the West Wind

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,

Read more