The poem “Ode to the West Wind” shows Shelley’s keen ardour of passion, eager
sensibilities and his sense of personal sorrow. It expresses not only his
personal despondency but also embodies his fervent hope of a world delivered
from evil. To quote S.A. Brooke, “He (Shelley) passes from magnificent union of
himself with Nature and magnificent realization of her storm and peace to
equally great self-description, and then mingles all Nature and all himself
together, that he may sing of the restoration of mankind”.
Shelley was an idealist who
conjured up visions of glorious future of mankind. He was disgusted with his
contemporary society which was a play-ground for the forces of tyranny,
hypocrisy, injustice and superstation. In “Ode
to the West Wind” he dreams of a golden age where human relation will be guided by love and justice
after the ultimate overthrow of age-old corruption. This is how the note of despondency
arising out of the poet’s frustration in the personal life is counter balanced
by the happy note of his vision of a golden age to come in future.
The poem begins with an
invocation to the West wind, first as a spirit of destruction and creation
which moves over the land sweeping away the old and sowing seeds of new, next
as the shower that moves the sky with fierce outburst of lightning of clouds
and rains; and finally, as the inmost recesses of the ocean and fills it with
the play of life and death.
