by Patrick Mooney

This can be seen from the building tension in the poem between the natural temporal progression of one season into another and the temporal progression of the poet's concept of his inspirational force. A close examination of the clues to the seasonal and temporal associations of Shelley's references will show that as long as Shelley fails to conceptualize the time-frame of the nature of his intended inspirational force in the same way that it operates naturally, he is unable to relate to it in a productive manner.

The natural temporal progression of one season into another needs no detailed explanation for those of us in temperate locales. Spring brings the growth of new life, then progresses into summer; summer progresses into autumn; autumn brings the slowing down of life and preparation for and progress into the metaphoric sleep and/or death of winter; and winter turns back into spring, beginning a new year and beginning again the cycle of growth and decay.

The temporal progress of the poet's conception of his intended inspirational force, on the other hand, is much more complex. The poem's present is in the autumn of a year -- presumably the year in which it was composed, but there is no particular indication of this; in fact, the poem's refusal to give details that would locate it in a specific time give it a temporally universal character -- but the poet's thought ranges forward and backward in time throughout the course of the poem.

The poem's present is located in autumn, as is shown by the fact that the poem is an address to the West Wind, which is the "breath of autumn's being." (Shelley 1) This can also be seen from the image of the dead leaves driven by the wind. (2-5) Shelley's imagery in the first five lines of the poem picks up and uses the traditional mythological association of death with winter and applies it to associate the fall of the autumn leaves with disease and approaching death: He speaks of "leaves dead" which are compared to "ghosts ... fleeing"; the leaves are described as "hectic," a word associated in Shelley's time with the flush of pestilence; and the leaves are described as "pestilence-stricken multitudes." (2-5)

Shelley quickly shifts the temporal location of his thought to winter in line six, where he describes the wind as carrying "winged seeds" to "their dark wintry bed." (7,6) Here winter is explicitly and unequivocally associated with death: These "winged seeds" are described as "Each like a corpse within its grave." (8)

The temporal focus of Shelley's thoughts shifts again, this time to the spring, in line nine. Spring is described as a reawakening of life: Shelley tells us that the spring wind shall fill "the dreaming earth" with "living hues and odours plain and hill." (10,12) After describing the effects of spring's "clarion" on the earth, the focus of the narrator's thought snaps back to the poetic present in the last two lines of the first stanza, and he explicitly invokes the autumn wind, asking it to "hear, oh hear!" (14) The poet's thought during the first stanza, then, ranges in time through most of the seasonal cycle of the year, then returns to the present in a discontinuous jump.

Shelley fluctuates between using death and sleep as metaphors for winter in the first stanza. He first explicitly associates winter with death, as described above, and then describes spring as a reawakening, not a resurrection -- the spring wind's trumpet affects "the dreaming earth" in line 10, not a "dead earth." This dual metaphoric nature is maintained throughout the poem -- for instance, Shelley refers to the coming winter as both "night" (implying sleep) and the "dying year" (implying death) in line 24; he refers to ashes (dead sparks) in line 67 and to an "unawakened earth" (implying sleep) in line 68. The fact that Shelley employs two different metaphors, however, is not problematic, simply because both sleep and death are adequate and traditional metaphors for the state of the earth in winter. Autumn is described both with the oncoming sleep of winter (for instance, in the "night" of line 24) and with the oncoming death of winter (for instance, in the "pestilence" of line five) in mind.

After the quickly moving temporal changes of the first stanza, Shelley continues the autumnal theme of the first stanza's last two lines in the second stanza. The fact that the second stanza refers only to autumn can be seen from a variety of pieces of evidence: the reference to "decaying leaves" in line 16; the "dying [not ëdead'] year" of line 24; the reference in line 25 to the fact that the year will (but does not yet) have a "sepulchre"; the storm mentioned in lines 18-23, which seems to have an autumnal character; and the present tense of all of the verbs that are used to describe (rather than predict) the present situation, which references the poem's present, in the autumn.

Shelley stays with the autumnal theme in the second stanza after snapping back to it at the end of the first, but this shift in the temporal locale of the poet's thought from spring (ll. 9-12) to autumn (ll. 13-28) at the end of the first stanza is significant. It is disturbing because it is unnatural in two ways: it is a reversal of the natural passing of one season into another (spring is expected to flow forward into summer, not backward into autumn), and it is discontinuous (spring passes into autumn without passing through either summer or winter, the seasons which normally separate spring and autumn from each other). This unnatural shift in temporal locale fails to parallel the natural passage of seasons, and this failure to make a parallel in thought with the natural passage of time is repeated in the transition from autumn (the poem's present) to summer (the poem's past) between the second and third stanzas.

That the third stanza of the poem describes events of a summer is apparent from an examination of Shelley's language: the "summer dreams" of line 29 and the calm ("lulled") Mediterranean of lines 31-32 demonstrate this. That summer is the poem's past is apparent from the past-tense verbs used in the main clauses of Shelley's constructions throughout most of the stanza: it is demonstrated by the "didst" of line 29, the "lay" of line 30, and the "saw" of line 33. Most of the main verbs not in the past tense in the third stanza indicate an action that is still occurring (and can be expected to have been occurring during the poetic past, as well -- the cleaving of the sea by the wind of lines 36-38 and the knowing of the seasons by the sea-vegetation in lines 39-41 provide good examples of this). Those verbs in the third stanza not in the present tense that do not indicate a still-occurring action come in the last two lines of the stanza ("grow," "tremble," "despoil") serve an important function: They anticipate the coming autumn.

By anticipating the coming autumn, Shelley fundamentally reverses the unnatural relationship that his thoughts have had, so far in the poem, to time. He describes a poetic past of a tranquil summer, provides a bridge to the poetic present of the autumn (by describing the seasonal change in lines 39-42), and then moves into the poetic present in the fourth stanza. By doing all of this, he provides a continuous jump from one season to another for the first time since he unnaturally jumped from spring to autumn between lines 12 and 13 in the first stanza. Furthermore, this is the first time since that jump from spring back to autumn that he has jumped forward in time, in accordance with the natural progression of the seasons.

This mental shift to accord with the natural seasonal progression has immediate benefits for the poet. Previously, in the first three stanzas, the speaker in the poem was only able to attempt to invoke the creative force, which he saw as something alien which was to "hear, oh hear" him. (14) Although the fourth stanza also takes the form of a series of invocations, these are shorter and less formal. Some are only one line long -- for instance, the invocations in lines 43 and 44 -- instead of being the the elaborate, fourteen-line invocations of the first three stanzas. The poet's conception of the creative force also changes: Rather than seeing it as something alien, he begins to see it as something which is capable of working through him; he wishes that he could be lifted as "a wave, a leaf a cloud!" by the inspirational Wind. (53) Throughout the stanza, the poet's conception of his relation to this inspirational force changes. At first, he sees himself as something that the wind could, conceivably, work through ("thou mightest bear"); he pleads the wind to work through him later in the stanza ("Oh lift me" is the clearest expression of this desire); at the end, he identifies himself with the West Wind's inspirational force, saying that he is "one too like thee." (43;53;56)

In the fourth stanza, and in the transition from the third to the fourth stanza, Shelley finally began to align his process of thought to the natural seasonal progression demanded by the nature of his inspirational force; he completes the process of attenuation in the last part of the fourth stanza and the beginning of the fifth stanza. The fourth stanza proceeds in a continuous manner from the third, and in the proper order; but most of the fourth stanza is simply a group of static statements that all describe a single emotion at a single point in time. A static thought is not completely attuned to the temporal nature of the progression of the seasons that Shelley's inspirational force demands simply because it is static. Shelley spends lines 43-52 listing metaphors that describe a relation he would have with the inspirational West Wind; this intended relationship does not begin to develop -- grow over time -- until the "Oh lift me" of line 53. It undergoes another fundamental shift in lines 55-6, when he not only pleads with the wind, but identifies with it.

This forward temporal movement takes a different form in the fifth stanza. The narrator's thoughts are now turned outward and encompass events in the natural world, and events in the natural world show the progression of time. The "leaves ... falling" of line 58, indicating early autumn, become "withered leaves," indicating late autumn or early winter, in line 64. This late autumn/early winter time frame naturally accounts for the "unawakened [sleeping] earth" of line 68. The winter itself is tensed with anticipation for the coming spring, for the awakening of earth promised by the "clarion" call of the "trumpet of prophecy" and for the "[quickening] new birth" of the "sweet buds" and the "winged seeds" that have spent the winter in their "wintry bed." (10,69; 64,11,7,6)

It is only at this late point that the poem begins to shape its own reception. Now that the poet has attuned his mind to the seasonal operation of his inspirational force and bridged the conceptual gap between him and it, he is able to take full advantage of its creative power to influence its interpretation. Shelley first describes his own developing relationship to his inspirational force. At first, he is to be the "lyre" played by the West Wind, and the Wind will take from him, as from the forest, a "deep autumnal tone,/ Sweet though in sadness." (57, 59-61) He then modifies this concept of his relationship to the Wind, which is a concept that still conceives of the poet and the inspirational force as different entities (although entities that work closely together), by making a statement of complete identity with his inspirational force: "Be thou, spirit fierce,/ My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!" (61-2)

At this point, Shelley is in control of his relationship to his inspirational force, and can use his control of this force to shape the reception of the poem. Only in the last eight lines of the last stanza does he make a statement of how the poem is to be received.

All of the images Shelley now uses to shape the poem's interpretation -- "dead thoughts" blown like "withered leaves" by the Wind, words scattered like "Ashes and sparks ... among mankind," the "trumpet of a prophecy" -- involve the dispersion of something (an object or a sound) from a central source over a large distance. (63-4,67,69) Shelley, then, is not particularly concerned with the reception of his ideas -- or the poem -- among individuals, but rather the general reception of the poem and his ideas among "mankind." The poem is not meant to influence individual parts of society, but to influence the organic whole.

The images Shelley uses to describe the effects of the poem are all particularly indicative in light of this large-scale model of dispersion. "Withered [dead] leaves" from the fall can serve to provide the soil with nutrients to allow for the growth of new life in the spring, and "Ashes and sparks" can transfer a fire from one place to another, or ignite a new fire from an old one; both of these are images of a new birth from dead material. A trumpet call can allow one individual to rally a large number of others. All of these models allow for Shelley to spread his influence, not only to single other individuals, but to the population in general. All of these images, which build on or are related to images from earlier in the poem ("ashes and sparks" suggests "winged seeds" in terms of a method of dispersion, for instance), show that Shelley, once he has harnessed the inspirational power of the force he invokes, has a clear conception of how the poem is to be received.

Figures one and two, above, are complimentary. Figure one shows the natural cycle of seasons, to which Shelley's narrator needs to attune himself to make full use of the prophetic and inspirational powers of the West Wind. Figure two shows the course of temporal thought that this narrator engages in throughout the course of the poem. In this second figure, the stanzas are represented by concentric arcs: the first stanza by the inmost arc, the second stanza by the next arc outward, and so forth. The temporal discontinuities in thought -- the occasion when Shelley's narrator's thought jumps from the future back to the present between lines 12 and 13 and the occasion when the narrator's though jumps from the present back to the past between the second and third stanzas -- are represented by dashed lines. Natural progressions in time between stanzas -- when Shelley's narrator's thought remains in a single time period between stanzas one and two or stanzas four and five, or when the narrator intentionally bridges from one season to the next between stanzas between stanzas three and four -- are shown with solid lines between the arcs representing the stanzas. When a single stanza progresses naturally through more than one season, as in stanza five and the first twelve lines of stanza one, the curve of the arc sweeps through the spaces representing the seasons without a discontinuity.

A comparison of the two diagrams shows the gap between the method of thought that Shelley's narrator needs to achieve and the reality of the situation over the course of the poem. At first, as noted in the text above, the narrator's thought is uncontrolled, disjointed, and out of tune with the processes of thought needed to relate to his inspirational force. Gradually, however, Shelley's narrator brings his patterns of thought into line with the natural pattern required by his inspirational force.

This attunement is required because the narrator becomes the "lyre" played by his inspirational force, the West Wind, and so is required to harmonize with it in his patterns of thought, and because he then begins to identify himself with this inspirational force. For this reason, the poem is not immediately concerned with its own reception for most of its length: It needs to establish enough control over itself and the creative force driving it before it can attempt to shape its interpretation. Once this has been accomplished, however, the poem turns immediately to shape its own reception in the minds of readers with a group of symbolic allusions that develop from -- and lend a coherence to -- the already-existing imagery of the struggle for control over and identification with the inspirational force of the poem.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ode to the West Wind" in Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998.