Transcript British Literature: Romantic Poetry

“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Shelley wrote this as a Romantic, English
expatriate, living in Italy. He wanted to feel
connected to the powerful social movement.
 He belonged to a philosophical movement
called neo-Platonism.
 Basically
there is an ideal world existing.
 There is an over soul, source of our being that we
are all connected to.
Form: “Ode to the West Wind”
 Ode: lyrical stanza of praise
 Terza Rima (like the Divine Comedy)
 ABA BCB CDC DED EE
 Generally iambic pentameter
 This poem is also in poetic chapters, called Cantos (like
DC)
 Play on the sonnet form within cantos
 14 lines
 4 tercets and a couplet instead of 3 quatrains and a
couplet
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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,
What poetic devices to you notice?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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,
Apostrophe, Personification, Enjambment,
Simile
What is the effect?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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,
The West Wind has power: power to
move.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
As the “breath of Autumn’s being” the
WW moves the ominous dead leaves.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
Like “hectic red” in the previous stanza,
“cold and low” has a musical sound due
to assonance.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
The West Wind brings seeds to place,
but they must be in the grave “like
corpses” (simile) until azure Spring.
Note colors: Winter- yellow, black,
hectic red. Spring- blue
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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, O hear!
Spring will see a rejuvenation period.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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, O hear!
This invocation to hear (apostrophe)
calls WW “Destroyer and Preserver”.
How does this work?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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, O hear!
The WW banishes winter, but prepares
for spring. How might this relate to
Shelley?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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,
The speaker compares the West Wind’s
clouds to dead leaves in a stream.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy 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
A storm is brewing…
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy 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
A Maenad is a mythical, wild haired participant in the
cult of Dionysus.
What is the effect of this simile?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy 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
The storm is wild and all encompassing with a center.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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: O hear!
The speaker calls the WW a dirge (funeral song) and says that
the storm will be the tomb to the dying year (metaphor and
imagery)
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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: O hear!
Another invocation, this time associated with black
rain and fire and hail.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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,
WW also has power to wake the Mediterranean and
Baisae’s bay who dream about the past
(personification)
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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
WW even moves the Atlantic. Also, notice more
assonance.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
Invocation of the WW who is so powerful
that it frightens the ocean life who in turn
hurt themselves trembling.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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 speaker wishes to be a dead leaf or cloud so
that the WW could move him.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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
He would settle for his boyhood belief that he
could companion and outrun the WW
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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.
Time has weighed him down and slowed
him down, but not broken his spirit.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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!
The speaker asks to be WW’s instrument
(metaphor) or even come into the speaker
entirely.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
His thoughts may only be fertilizer or
decomposing leaves (simile), but they can
“quicken a new birth”
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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?
I may be run down to “ashes and sparks”
but they can still start a fire!
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelly
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?
Change must be coming…
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Inspired by the ruins of a statue of Egyptian
Pharaoh, Ramses II (AKA Ozymandias)

Ramses II challenged anyone to surpass him in greatness.
 Napoleon tried to get it in the 1790s, but it weighed
too much (7.5 tons)
 The British museum acquired it in 1817
 Shelley and a friend (Horace Smith) had a little
sonnet competition with it as the subject.
 The poem looks at what happens to tyrants and
despotic rulers.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Form: Modified Petrarchan Sonnet
14
lines
Octave-Sestet Structure
Variation comes in rhyme scheme and
meter
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
Sets the scene that this statue is from
antiquity.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
All that is left of him now: legs and an eerily
accurate facial expression.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that
fed;
The sculptor may have been able to tell
something about the Pharaoh that even he
didn’t know.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Inscription: Irony
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Not only has the statue decayed, there is
also complete abandonment and
isolation. (Alliteration adds to this effect)