Shelley belongs the the second generation of the romantic poets. He believed in man's ability to progress and re-perfect, this idealism makes him him accept that Utopia is possible, The ode to the West Wind was mainly conceived in a wood on the edge of Arno, near Florence.
The poet speaks of the West Winds a 'destroyer' and a 'preserver'. The wing ensures the regular cycle of seasons and the poem brings out, through this, the theme of regeneration. Shelley believes that death is the beginning of new life.
At the beginning of the poem, Shelley describes the influence of the wind on land. The autumn wind scatters the dead leaves of various colours and runs ilk spirits, fleeing in the presence of a socerer or an enchanter. There is a latent meaning because the winds of change must sweep away the dead ideas contained in the leave in the knaves of old books to make way for fresh ideas and new inspiration.
The wind also carries the seeds like charioteer, preserves them by burying corpses in graves. In spring, the breeze 'azure sister of spring' will blow her loud trumpet to awaken nature, give life o a new buds which will fill the plains and hills with 'hues and colours'. The poet calls the west wind a wild spirit which destroys withered sickness and preserves life in anticipation or regeneration,
The poet then, describes how the West Wind helps the clouds and the oceans to shed rain as much as it helps the trees to shed leaves. The dead foliage nurtures life un the forest soil and in the same way rain helps in growing new. Shelley describes the cloud that spread along the horizon to the high sky as the bright 'hair' of a maenad, a worship of Bacchus. Bachhus is associated with wine and vegetation and therefore the imagery is well suited.
Shelley says that the year is dying and the sound of the west wind is like a dirge mourning the dying year. The cloudy night sky is described as the dome of a vast 'sepal chure', it's walls marked by rain, lightening...