"Ode to the West Wind" by Shelley: Imagery

Question: Examine Shelley’s imagery in relation to his theme in Ode to the West Wind.

The term ‘imagery’ refers to a collection of images to signify the objects and qualities of sense perception, whether by literal description, by allusion or in the analogies used in its similes and metaphors. Perhaps the most beautifully imaginative of the English Romantic poets was Shelley. He was particularly excellent in his ability to convey sensations in terms of imagery, predominantly visual. he was a poet of profound idealism and prophetic passion. Shelley invariably aspired to the infinite and the eternal. The method in many of Shelley’s poetry was to find in natural objects symbols for his emotional and imaginative patterns. In Ode to the West Wind, Shelley found, in the central and pervading image of the all-powerful West Wind, a dualistic role of destruction and preservation. At the very outset of the poem, the West Wind is presented as an enormously powerful agency. The second stanza pictures the wind in its stormy and terrible aspect as operating in the sky further offers us strikingly forceful images. Stanza III opens with an iridescent picture of the Wind which rouses the Mediterranean from its slumber. Shelley uses objects of nature, makes them imagistic in reference to his ideas in poetry. The objectivity of the poet’s attitude in the first three stanzas gives place to a reflective and emotional melancholy mood in Stanza IV. A close examination of Shelley’s imagery in Ode to the West Wind, thus, justifies his claim as one of the most accomplished poets of Romantic Imagination whose verbal picturisation became a wonderful vehicle of his thoughts and emotions.