The Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Bysshee Shelley, is a poem of spiritual power. The power is demonstrated through the use of visual, auditory, and kinetic (motion) imagery. The poem was written on a day that the “tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumns rains [Shelly’s notes].” The poem uses terza rima to portray a very rhythmic rhyming pattern. This pattern is used to describe five very distinct and different stanzas, which describe: autumn, rainstorms, the sea, man merging with the wind, and man being the sound of the wind. Shelley uses three types of imagery in each of these stanzas. His use of visual, auditory, and kinetic imagery is demonstrated in each of the five stanzas throughout Ode to the West Wind.In the first stanza of Shelley’s poem, Shelley describes autumn and the changing of colors. “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes,” is a visual imagery of the leaves that change colors in the fall. “Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth,” is a strong auditory image of the wild west winds blowing in as autumn arrives. “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere,” is kinetic imagery, which describes the energy, and the force that drives the spirited west wind.In stanza two Shelley talks of the effects that the west wind has on a rainstorm. “Angels of rain and lightning there are a spread On the blue surface of thine aery surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head,” is a very vivid and colorful use of visual imagery. These lines do a great job of imaginatively taking the reader to the front of the wind to see its power on a storm. “Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear,” is a great line used by Shelley to fuel the readers thoughts of how powerful the sound of the wind and storm are. “Shook fro...
