Ode to the West Wind

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Ode to the West Wind

The terza rima Ode to the West Wind is one of the most

prized of Shelley's shorter lyrics. In it, the poet makes exquisite use of the terza rima. The terza rima is the verse form employed by Dante in his Divine Comedy. The meter of it is predominantly iambic pentameter. The stanza is made up of interlinking three-line unit with the rhyme scheme ababcbcdc, continuing thus to the end of the stanza.

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Ode to the West Wind

The theme of the poem Shelley's desire to make heard his ideas

for political and social reform is usually seen as the main theme of the poem. There is also another way to read the poem biographically, as the personal consolation that a Romantic poet is offering himself, because he is aging and has lost his adolescent ecstasies and he needs a rebirth of energy and ecstasy.

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Ode to the West Wind Style analysis The nature of the interlinking of the units and the effects

produced by this interlinking can be studied as we read the lyric: 1) The interlinking of the three-line units (tercet) goes well with the nature of the west wind, which is both a preserver and a destroyer. Through this verse form, the poet reminds the reader that the west wind keeps on destroying something such as the “a” rhyme in the first unit and preserves something such as the “b” rhyme of the first unit in the second unit and such process of preserving and destroying keeps going on and on until the entirely new rhyme scheme of the last unit (couplet) is established. That reminds us that the preserving and destroying process of the revolution will be going on and on until an entirely new world is established.

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Ode to the West Wind Style analysis The nature of the interlinking of the units and the effects produced by this

interlinking can be studied as we read the lyric: 2) Another striking artistic feature of this lyric is the unusual rhyme scheme of the couplet which ends the stanza. The stanza ends not with a tercet (three-line unit) but with a couplet. The ode is made up of 5 stanzas constructed like the first except the rhymes of the concluding couplets of all but the lst and the 5th are true rhymes. When there is no observable justification for the false rhymes, it is a fault; when it is encountered in the work of an obviously conscientious craftsman like Shelley, one is obliged to conclude that the poet is introducing slight irregularities in the ordered harmonies of his structure to indicate that the west wind represents a never-ending cycle of birth and death, of order within seeming disorder, and even of beauty with terror, of the pain we must all bear, and of the obligation of the poet to be more than a painter of pretty pictures. We will inevitably meet some difficulty in the process of revolution which is bound to win.

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