[sabbixsweraco]

I have taken my share of poetry classes and there are days (like when we did P.B. Shelley...you could hear the silent groans as students waited out prof and profs quietly challenged students to speak up! And oddly enough it was simply amazing how when the first courageous person said something...as simple as I think this poem means or....i liked the part where...and this is why or how...anyway to explain rather than just appreciate is a welcome courtesy to poem...many times we admitted to not knowing at all what the poem or part of the poem was about....but the important thing was....everyone's contribution small or in depth became crucial to everyone's understanding of the poem...

that all said I will just like to show what I always love about poems...the verbage is just rich....look at how many times colour and colour related words are used to express a colourless wind....

Furthermore look at all the rich coloured images that he uses...all are being charged and invigorated by the winds power..these i have hi lighted in red....as simple as saying fire brings to mind all these crackling, ferocious crimsons, yellows, whites, fiery oranges....see how many times leaves is mentioned..and specifically autumn leaves...the most colourful leaves of all...and then see how the colours and colour images fade into gray and ash to the bleakness of winter...see how much death imagery is associated with winter (highlighted in brown)

NOW someone else (as inexperienced as you may declare yourself to be)...please find and highlight all the words that have to do with the five senses...see how a wind that we can neither see or hear or smell can be all these things...

PP Maam it would really help us if you could point out the imagery that you really like....i know as anyone else just the sheer length of a poem can be scary but when broken up into bits of pictures....it is more kinder to every reader

P. B. Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

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
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
(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!
*clarion is a trumpet
** did you know /shelley was really into eastern religions? destroyer/preserver ring any bells???

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! they are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n 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*,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst-O hear!

*dirge is a mourning song
*sepulchre is a tomb

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline 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
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
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear
And tremble and despoil themselves:-O hear!

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
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
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
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy *lyre, ev'n 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,
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,
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?
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lyre is an instrument resembling a guitar