Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Subject Matter: change, nature, nature poetry, power, prophetic poetry, revolution, revolutionary verse, the sublime, wind
Related content:
Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind". An illustrated and dramatised reading.
0:00 Intro
0:12 Canto One
1:12 Canto Two
2:07 Canto ...Three
3:05 Canto Four
4:00 Canto Five
Did you know that "Ano sensei!" has made in-depth videos on Keats's Odes (https://tinyurl.com/anokeats), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (https://tinyurl.com/anokubla), Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (https://tinyurl.com/anotintern) and many others? Subscribe and get the best poetry analysis videos on YouTube!
You can also view the readings and analysis combined into a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKW5yKJ82-Q&list=PLzVb6yL_jY68kvKQYjfOBXwK3NZyy0pCj
For a wider range of materials on poetry and other topics, visit my website: https://educationalhub.org
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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
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 !
II
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 ! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, 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,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail with burst : O hear !
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled 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 !
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
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 seemed 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 chained and bowed
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,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one !
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind !
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?Show More
6 Comments
this is a good hymn to use when falcao the goat scores
Did you know Shelley was a master goalkeeper? A goat would never get past him. It would take a tiger!
😎😎🤯🤯😳😳
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🤣🤣🤣
😊