Ode to the West Wind
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
                                     I  
   
O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being  
     Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead  
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,  
   
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,  
     Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou  5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed  
   
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,  
     Each like a corpse within its grave, until  
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow  
   
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 10
     (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)  
With living hues and odours plain and hill;  
   
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;  
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!  
   
                                     II  
   
Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, 15
     Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,  
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,  
   
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread  
     On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,  
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20
   
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge  
     Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,  
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge  
   
Of the dying year, to which this closing night  
     Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might  
   
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere  
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!  
   
                                     III  
   
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams  
     The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30
Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,  
   
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,  
     And saw in sleep old palaces and towers  
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,  
   
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35
     So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou  
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers  
   
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below  
     The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear  
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40
   
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,  
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!  
   
                                     IV  
   
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;  
     If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;  
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45
   
The impulse of thy strength, only less free  
     Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even  
I were as in my boyhood, and could be  
   
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,  
     As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50
Scarce seem’d a vision — I would ne’er have striven  
   
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!  
   
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d 55
One too like thee — tameless, and swift, and proud.  
   
                                     V  
   
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:  
     What if my leaves are falling like its own?  
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies  
   
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60
     Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,  
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!  
   
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,  
     Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;  
And, by the incantation of this verse, 65
   
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth  
     Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!  
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth  
   
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,  
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70
   
 
Mœnad — A Mœnad (or Maenad) is a female votary of the Greek deity Dionysius, who is the god of ecstasy, frenzy, and intoxication. Dionysian rites of worship were orgiastic in the extreme.
 
Baiae’s Bay — Baiae (or Baiœ) is a resort town on the Bay of Naples. Since ancient Roman times, the rich and super-rich have had villas there, and the town was famous in Shelley’s era as a place to indulge one’s most hedonistic desires. A fair comparison today would be Cancun, Ibiza, or Monte Carlo.
 
The sapless foliage of the ocean — Shelley had recently read that some underwater plants also changed color with the seasons, and included a note to that effect when he published the poem:

“The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.”