Ode To The West Wind

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April 28, 2011 Ode to the West Wind Shelley’s friend “discusses Shelley as a passionately religious poet who formulates his religion by the actual writings of this poem.” (Harold Bloom). Shelley’s most truehearted admirers acknowledge that Shelley’s poetry presents special stylistic difficulties. In Ode to the West Wind the wind symbolizes the end of the summer. “It ushers in autumn and the rainy season.”(GALE Virtual Reference Library). “This poem was conceived and chiefly written a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, [Italy] and on a day when that tempestuous wind is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumn rains.”(Percy Bysshe Shelley). “Ode to the West Wind contributed a great deal to the poem’s meaning.”(Jeannie Johnson). Why does Shelley want to destroy the world with his venomous thoughts? Does he want the world to afflict with him? What is his purpose of wanting a new family, if he is attempting to demolish the world? Is Shelley trying to find new inspiration within a new family? “Shelley’s description gives the location of the poem, but says nothing of the strained emotional circumstances in which it was composed.”(GALE Virtual Reference Library). Shelley was provoked by watching an oncoming storm near Florence, Italy, where he was living. Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley expresses Shelley’s fascination with power and with those forces- both destroyers and preservers- that inspire the same poets within the poet. Shelley had a fascination with powers. He wanted the wind to blow away the leaves. The wind marked the end of the summer, coming into a new season. While placing seeds in the earth bringing thunderstorms, the storms will darken the sky with torrents rains. “Black rain, and fire and hail will burst.”(Elements of Literature 736). The wail of wind is compared to a song to a song of grief,
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