Shelley's :"Ode to the West Wind": Recited from Memory by Dr. Rafey Habib

"Ode to the West Wind": Percy Bysshe Shelley

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,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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• Rafey
• Habib

[luxvoyager1111]

poems have many facets and are rarely about only one thing, so i do not think that literal interpretations are ignorant...poetry's ability to shift and encompass many things at once is part of what's so amazing and moving about it. this poem is really beautiful in it's expressions of nature and the innate spirit, and of the social and political issues of the past...

[Elibobbob]

I think it's very ignorant to believe this is about the wind. Since when has a poem been about it's title, it's a metaphore, in this case it's a symbol, a symbol of 'revolution' wind of change. The west wind is a rosicrucian symbol for revolution, in many arts, Shakesphere (francis bacon) sonnets, Boticellie's Primavera & The Birth of Venus (zephyus) This poem is about pagan repression by christians & he's saying in symbols 'hear me' but no one is, they're just hearing the wind. It's rosicrucian

[Borealis2007]

awesome reading...love this poem...

[michaelhogan100]

Lovely reading!

[mhabib3]

@Esqpainting Thank you...bless you...

[Esqpainting]

I absolutely LOVE this Poem! It has a special significance for me.

Thank you!

"Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams...."

It gives me chills.

" I fall upon the thorns of life, and bleed"

And I could go on all day.

I think that, after seeing this, I'm going to live in Ode to the West Wind for a while, like a wounded fawn seeking refuge in the Forest.

[a198326]

touching you read!

[ferlinghetti]

beautyful, beautyful

[GraysonSuorez]

Neat. Awesome readin--thanks.

[Soraxever]

beautifull poem, nature for shelley <3