Transcript Illustrated Support Material for Class

O west wind you ,who is the
essence of autumn ,blow the
withered dead leaves away ....
Just like spirits flee from a
sorcerer.
Leaves of every colour , millions
that are diseased and withered
… you take them and bury them
in the snow … just like you bury
all the evil things of the world.
Winged seeds that have the
power to germinate, lie cold
and low in their graves of snow.
As soon as your sister, the gentle breeze of
spring , blows her clarion, the slumbering
earth awakes and is filled with colours and
fragrances of life.
O untamed west wind, you move
everywhere with no direction.
You destroy life as well as
preserve them when you help the
seeds to re-germinate.
As a stream you blow over the sky and make the loose clouds of the
tangled boughs of heaven and ocean fall onto your surface . These
clouds will lead to rainfall. The line between the sky and the stormy
sea is indistinguishable and the whole space from the horizon to the
zenith is covered with trailing storm and clouds.
Clouds are the messenger of rain and lightning, spread on your blue surface
that keeps moving. These two phenomena with their “fertilizing and illuminating
power” bring about a change. Locks of the wildly flying hair of Maenad are
compared to the lightning from the horizon to the zenith indicating the
approaching storm.
A year is filled with various political, social, emotional, and
personal instabilities.
Now you are like a funeral song to the grave of the dying year of all political, social
and emotional problems; and to which this night made of rain, lightning, thunder and
storm will be the tombstone. From your solid atmosphere black rain, fire and hail will
burst.
You have awakened the slumbering Mediterranean from its summer dreams which
was lulled into sleep by the melodious sound of its own streams’ flowing water. It can
be located beside a volcanic island in Baiae’s bay ( at the northern end of the Gulf
of Naples) and you saw the old-drowned palaces in your sleep, when the day is
bright enough to reflect those monuments.
You are fully covered with gentle moss and flowers that are very beautiful which
gives pleasure to my inner sight. When you blow over the Atlantic ocean, it divides
itself into chasms to give way. While the sapless sea plants and slimy woods hearing
your voice tremble with fear and spoil themselves.
Make me a dead leaf, a cloud, or a wave and let me share your force that is more
than any emotion. If I was in my boyhood I could be a companion of your wanderings
and I surely would have outrun you. But I know it is impossible for me to leave out all my
experiences behind and enter a world of innocence.
So now I pray to you in my hour of need to lift from all my problems though I know
you cannot remove my experiences. The only chance I see for my wish to come true
is by pain or death as it will lead to my rebirth. So I fall on the thorns of my
experiences and bleed. A heavy chain binds around me due to the weight of hours
of my life. The chain has bowed a person similar to you – tame less, swift and proud.
You blow through me and make me your lyre like you blow through the forest to
create music and take away all my worries and fears. But this time the autumnal tone
created by you with your mighty harmonies will be sweet as well as a bit sad because
we are striving for a change. The autumnal tone you have created through me should
be the process through which you will scatter my revolutionary thoughts ,like dead
leaves ,all over the world to quicken a new birth. I chant to you to spread my words
that are like unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks to the unawakened earth.
O west wind ! You are the announcement of the prophecy. A
prophecy that says sufferings are bound to pass and give way to
good times.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major
English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets
in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John
Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife.
He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias,
Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which
are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English
language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included
Alastor, Adonaïs, The Revolt of Islam, and the unfinished work The
Triumph of Life. The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) were
dramatic plays in five and four acts respectively. He wrote the Gothic novels
Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short works The Assassins
(1814), The Coliseum (1817) and The Mass (1817). Shelley's
unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong
disapproving voice, made him an authoritative and much-denigrated figure
during his life and afterward. Shelley never lived to see the extent of his
success and influence. Some of his works were published, but they were
often suppressed upon publication. Up until his death, with approximately 50
readers as his audience, it is said he made no more than 40 pounds from his
writings. He became an idol of the next three or even four generations of
poets, including the important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was
admired by Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand
Russell, Upton Sinclair, Isadora Duncan, and Jiddu Krishnamurti ("Shelley
is as sacred as the Bible.") Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience and
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were influenced and
inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.
Made By : GEETANJALI Xth B
ROLL NO. 12