Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is an exemplary piece of Romantic Era poetry. It explores such themes as personal freedom, creation and the craft of poetry, and the role of the poet in 19th-Century British society, among other themes. The speaker makes use of apostrophe and personification to paint a picture of the West Wind’s awesome powers. Moving through the tight terza rima form with playful alliteration, grandiose imagery gradually gives way to a vulnerable exploration of the speaker’s anxieties about modern life and the uncertainty of the future. The poem stands at a decisive moment in Shelley’s writing life, when the overtly political revolutionary themes in his work took a backseat to broader philosophical concerns. “Ode to the West Wind” balances formal mastery with invention, desperation with optimism, and the natural world with the personal, embodying all the reasons why Shelley’s work is still widely read today.

Shelley wrote “Ode to the West Wind” in 1819 in a forest outside of Florence, Italy. It was published in his collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, and Other Poems in 1820.