Last Blog about the Romantic Period

So of course, I've waited until one day before the deadline to write this blog. This blog is supposed to be on a subject from the Romantic period which is defined on the timeline between 1780-1830. We've read poems and essays from writers like Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), William Wordsworth (“Tintern Abbey”), Samuel Coleridge (“Frost at Midnight”), Percy Shelley, and John Keats (“Ode to a Nightingale”). Typically, I should be writing this blog on a poem that we just recently read. Unfortunately—because my blog wasn't due until this Sunday and I’m a professional procrastinator—we've moved on from Romanticism. Any poem I decided to look at is old news.

Because Pocahontas loves the wind, no matter what direction it comes from.

So let’s look at Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” There were at least three questions on the exam about it, one of them being the passage identification. This poem is obviously an ode with a complex rhyme scheme known as terza rima. A little research further informs me that terza rima (Italian for “third rhyme”) is most familiar with Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This style defines the form of grouping the lines in three-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ABA BCB CDC etc. Shelly makes ending the poem easier by adding in a couplet after every four 3-line stanzas. Shelley also borrows from the book of Dante’s tricks in dividing the poem in Cantos which is equivalent to Italian chapters in poetry.

Selecting a passage from a ‘longer’ poem, I decided to use the passage we students were presented on the exam, which is the fifth and last Canto.

“Ode to the West Wind” –Percy Shelley

[ I, II, III, IV… ]

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,

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?

I was able to identify the passage simply because of the mentioning of wind. I knew who the author was with the assistance of another question about the poem. Hopefully, Professor Hague doesn’t read this and decide to make it harder to identify passages in the future. ;-) On the test, I discussed the poem’s purpose as being about the loss of youth and the impact an individual can leave on Earth and while the wind may strip the leaves from trees and bring on winter and death, spring is sure to come again and rejuvenate nature. I kind of took a stab in the dark on the test, going off what was in the passage and what I could remember. Professor Hague commented that it was “more about Shelley asking the west—or autumn—wind to lift him up and make him forget earthly concerns.

I’ve reread the poem. Shelley addresses the West Wind as the force that brings Autumn to town, eventually followed by Winter. This poem is about the seasons; the death and resurrection of nature. The speaker wishes he were part of the cycle.

In Canto V, Shelley asks that the West Wind could turn him into an instrument that should be affected and played by the breeze. In asking that he be turned into an instrument, he compares the lyre to tree branches losing their leaves, indifferent to the loss and setting a tone of melancholy. Shelley wishes for the Wind to inhabit his spirit and spread his ideas. By the end,  the speaker is asking “O Wind,/If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” While simply questioning the sequence of events by which the seasons play out, the speaker contemplates whether after the death and decay, will something new be born in its wake. He hopes so.

Click to view full size

Animation credit: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pocahontas?before=1344104121 
Photo Credit: http://rankerx.deviantart.com/art/From-Winter-to-Spring-318501517