American Literature

    Reading the Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a pleasure on different levels because other than in being a multi-layered description of the seasons, it also has numerous imagery that are as well, metaphors for hope.  The longish poem is suffuse with metaphors of this kind, from the first few initial stanzas to the last few stanzas.  While this association may be made with most poems that talks about nature, Shelleys approach is quite unlike the approach of other contemporary poets.  The textual evidence shows that the suggestions are not associated, rather, they accurately echo the emotions that the poet would like these metaphors to have in the first place.
    For instance, early on in the poem, we have the lines, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead  Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, (2-3) Shelley personifies the West Wind as an enchanter from whence dead leaves flee.  This may just be a very simple visualization of dead leaves being blown away by the wind, but the way Shelley puts it, we may interpret it as the presence of an omnipotent force that blows away the visages of death, hence, here we have an image of hope for an eternal life, or from the freedom from death.  In the same stream, we have the lines, Each like a corpse within its grave, until   
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow. (8-9) which refer to the seeds that has been frozen underground, and should emerge from the frost with the coming of Spring.  This is a classic (and sometimes, even clichd) metaphor for hope notice however, that in these lines, the poet uses the color azure which is a bluish grey color and is often associated with the abstraction, hope.  This serves to even deepen the image of hope in seedling breaking forth from the frozen earth at the turn of Spring.  These same lines, with the phrase, each like a corpse within its grave (8) could still be construed the way the first few lines were construed as the hope of resurrection from death, if taken in the Christian context.  A recurrence of this hope-themed imagery and metaphors occur all throughout the poem, making all the seasons appear to each be symbols of hope on various levels.
    In the central portion of the poem, the poet describes the power of the West Wind over many other elements of nature, like the sea, the sky, and even the lightning (29-42), but notice that these are merely enumerations of what the West Wind is able to do, and the association comes in the lines, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.  O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud    I fall upon the thorns of life I bleed (52-54) when the voice in the poem begins to plead to the West Wind in recognition of its power.  The plea has something to do with the voices concern of not being able to recover from what life deals himher with, now the question is, with this plea, is there hope for the voice in the poem  The answer to this question is a flourish in the poem where the poet validates the significance of hope as an abstraction in the entirety of the poem.  This flourish happens in the lines Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,   Like witherd leaves, to quicken a new birth  And, by the incantation of this verse, (63-65) where the voice admits the inevitability of death and asks the West Wind to take this death and use it to cause rebirth, the rebirth which is symbolized by the final hopeful flourish in the poem which is the last two lines, The trumpet of a prophecy O Wind,  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind (69-70) which finally validates everything that is said in the poem, that the coming of the West Wind, despite its power is a sign that Spring should follow, therefore, interpreted metaphorically, the destruction, pain, and grief that one experiences in life are likened to the West Wind that simply indicate the emergence of a new day, a new hope, and a new lease on life.