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 wingèd 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 odors 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 airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, 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 vapors, 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 Baiæ'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 skyey 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 extinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unwakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
I think literature is the life itself. I search something in internet about this poem and find this video and I really affected from the pictures while listening poem. I think I started to like poems :) I highly recommend you to see this video.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58UI2i-n5Qw&feature=related
SEDEF KONUK
ReplyDeleteThis poem is really full of metaphors, images and a deep meaning. I can give some examples of them: the colors 'black' and 'pale' are mentioned. They are associated with death. ın the last line of the first canto, the west wind is considered as 'Destroyer' because it drives the last signs of life from the trees; and the 'preserver' for scattering the seeds which will come to life in spring.
this poem is mainly about the autumn. west wind scatters the dead leaves and make them come to the life again by the spring
ReplyDeletewest wind is the dirge of the dying year.
wind is destroyer and also preserver of the nature.
poet asks wind 'make me your lyre'. by that way he can scatter his words throughout the world.
-MerveKıymaz-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCeHYg2w6WA
with the unique voice of Dr.Rafey Habib.
...beni bir yaprak,bulut ya da bir dalga gibi havalandır,
ReplyDeleteçünkü benim ruhumda var rüzgar!..
I just wanna the translation of the lines cuz i wanna make you live and feel the poem better..
I just liked the melancholic atmosphere of the poem.Dead leaves dancin' in hectic red and gloomy yellow breeze just the images came into my mind while readin..
as if I felt the touch of West Wind in my face while I was reading...I am definitely impressed...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete[First of all, I'm very sorry that it's very long but it is my presantation and I assure you that it is worth reading. :)]
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I want to talk about is that Shelley sees himself to be part of a continuing cycle. Since he is an atheist, the only way his soul can live on is through the "incantation" of his words and this incantation is, I think, the wind which we see as enchanter in the first canto of the poem. The real wind is of course his poem but in the poem the wind flows through history, civilization, religions and human life itself as a power of change.When it flows through all those cencepts we see that it touches "death and rebirth" as much as it can.
Heavenly images are confirmed by Shelley's use of the word "azure,angels of rain, congregated might and trumpet of prophecy".But the main focus of this poem is not just religion, but what religion stands for which is again death and rebirth.
I think the clearest symbol of these main ideas apart from the wind and spring is the "pumice" as it indicates both destruction and creation.I mean that when the volcano erupts it destroys but it also creates more new land.
Some other important symbols are:
"winged seeds": Images of flying and freedom, especially seeds have the same function with the word "roe" in the poem Tintern Abbey.But we see that these seeds lie cold and low.
"cold and low":unnourished or not elevated-being trapped.
“Thine asure sister of spring.”:reflection of Shelley's view of rejuvenation.
"spring":besides being a literary metaphor for rebirth, it also means to rising up,human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or morality.
"Destroyer and Preserver" brings to mind religious overtones of different cultures such as Hinduism and Native Indian beliefs.
The sky’s "clouds" : they are a reference to the second line of the first canto "leaves dead."(the word dead is at the and to make emphasize on being dead.)
"fall upon the thorns of life and bleed":The only chance Shelley sees to make his prayer and wish for a new identity with the Wind come true is by pain or death, as death leads to rebirth.
"lyre":symbol of the poet’s own passivity towards the wind.
"extinguished hearth" :representation of the poets undying passion, namely immortality.
"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?": If you are suffering now, there will be good times ahead.Again, it shows Shelley's mentality of rejuvenation.
Now let's look at the other aspect of the poem.We see wind's effect upon 4 part of the element:
earth -in the first canto
air -in the second canto
water -in the third...and finally
fire -in the last(5th)canto.
In the first 3 canto we see that there is “the suppression of personality”. But now it becomes more and more clear that what the poet talks about now is himself.--frequency of the author’s use of the first-person pronouns ‘I’. These pronouns appear nine times in the fourth canto, and in the last canto poem converts into a self possesed one from the self-conscious one with the frequent use of possesives 'my' and 'thy'.
The last point I want to talk about is the famous lines of Shelley's "Defence of Poetry":
"Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration...the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
I think he is right because when we understand the poem it is impossible not to be impressed by it.I mean you feel the wind blowing above your head and you feel it makes your hair fly as if your hair waltz with the wind
GULNOZA NURULLAEVA
ReplyDeleteIf 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 skyey 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.
In this stanza the speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even if he were, as a boy, “the comrade” of the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would never have needed to pray to the wind and invoke its powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”—for though he is like the wind at heart, untamable and proud—he is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.
In this poem we see the describtion of nature in different aspects - especially the wind- In these lines, we can see the wind sometimes as "breath of Autumn", sometimes as "wild spirit", sometimes as "voice of fear", sometimes as "power" and sometimes as "music itself" (the melody of the wind. It represents a lot of feelings, emotion all together. And this is the most impressing part of this poem, I think.
ReplyDeleteÖznur Öztürk
ReplyDeleteMake me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
This stanza is the one which influenced me most.Here the speaker wants to be musical instrument of 'West Wind' and wants to produce same sound with the forest.West Wind is a way to expess himself with the music.''What if my leaves are falling like its own''In this line he wants to become integrated with the leaves of the forest to become music of West Wind.
In the poem the poet tells his admiration to the wind.Because wind can remove the leaves which are the symbol of the autumn in a way they represent gloom.And thanks to the west wind people get rid of that gloomy atmosphere.He wants to be like the wind, he wants to remove his sadness and change the world in a good way.
ReplyDeleteNur GEDİK
ReplyDeleteI think poet explicitly links nature with art by finding powerful metaphors and uses them to explain his ideas about the power,quality,and effect of aesthetic expression.Poet uses 'wind'as the most strong metaphor and he supposes it both as a destroyer and preserver.Wind is really holy for him actually and he gives many reasons for it in his poem.
Tülay Örücü
ReplyDeleteThere is not much left to say after Gülşah’s comment =)
What I liked most in this poem is the destroyer and the preserver thing and the atmosphere of the poem. As an autumn lover, I liked the colors used in descriptions (hectic red, azure, yellow, pale etc…)
Jiyan Taher :
ReplyDeleteShelly begins this poem by addressing the “Wild West Wind” and quickly introduces the theme of death and likens the dead leaves to “ghost from an enchanter fleeing. The leaves are described as “hectic red, Pestilence-stricken” which are ready to die. And autumn wind is likened to chariotest which is cold like their grave. He also says that autumn wind caries seeds and put them under ground. They lie as if dead bodies, until spring wind blows and it awakens the earth, which is rebirth of nature.
At the middle of the poem we understand that the speaker wants to be dead leaf carried by west wind “If I were a dead leaf thou mightiest bear”. He also wants to be wave to feel the power of west wind “A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share”. He wants to be something in nature, something which influenced by power of west wind. But he can’t be free as west wind. So he wants some source of freedom and in the end of the poem he says that “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”means if he is not free today, tomorrow he will be.
Fatma Kaya
ReplyDeleteIn the V th part of the poem, speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to drive his thoughts across the universe, like while the lyre is played it explains one’s thoughts who plays it “like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.” Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard to the effect upon mankind that he hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” he hopes that through his poem he can create some ideas in mankind’s mind like the lyre’s creating music.
This poem is about nature as the source of inspiration and the effects of the west wind on the nature.
ReplyDelete"Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou"
These lines show the effects of the nature on the poem.The colors here might simply indicate the different shades of the leaves, but it is also possible to interpret the leaves as symbols of human masses. Maybe, the colors represent different cultures: Asian, African, Caucasian, and Native American. This idea is supported by the phrase “Each like a corpse within its grave” in line 8 that could indicate that each person takes part in the natural cycle of life and death.
The effects of the nature is used succesfully and this makes the poem more pleasant.
Shelley depicts the impact of the West wind on the dead leaves of autumn. They are driven by the West Wind as Ghosts fleeing from an enchanter. They are like pestilence-stricken multitudes-yellow, black, pale and hectic red. The wind forces them to their wintry bed where they will stay buried like a corpse till the clarion call of spring shall arouse them to a new life. Therefore, West Wind combines in him the role of the Destroyer' and the Preserver.' It destroys the old decaying leaves. It scatters the seeds and thus preserves life. Likewise, the poet looks forward that the stagnant conventions die and make way for regeneration. The clouds on the sky resemble leaves on a tangled bough of the sky and ocean. They too are scattered in the sky as leaves on the earth are. They are the seraphs of rain and lightening. Yet again the picture of the West Wind as Preserver and Destroyer is sustained here
ReplyDelete