In "Ode to the West Wind," Percy Bysshe Shelley implies to the reader that his thoughts, like the "winged seeds" (7) are trapped. The West Wind signifies change and rejuvenation in the human and natural world. Shelley’s view on winter is that it signifies the death of plants and of vegetation but also implies the final stages of life to man. With the setting of autumn, Shelley observes how the change of weather also correlates with the change in human lives. How the seasons come and go, just as situations in our lives change and evolve with what’s happening around us. He expresses how nature is forced to adapt just like we are with the ever changing world around us. He Speaks of the "wintry bed" (6) and "The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow" (7-9). He is painting the setting of death and what could be a rejuvenation of life. He uses “Ode to the West Wind” to describe the process of life, death, and of rebirth.
Shelley begins by addressing the "Wild West Wind" (1) as the purveyor of all things changing; as though it is a sign of things yet to come. He opens the poem with a dark presence of the struggles we all endure between life and death. Shelley makes the reference of “like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing” (3), almost saying how we are continuously trying to run from death. He is depicting how the leaves of nature are dying and will be left to blow in the wind or to rot on the ground. It is almost as though he is talking about how when we as humans pass on, our bodies are left to decay and rot in the ground, our eternal slumber. The image of "Pestilence-stricken multitudes"(5) makes us the reader, aware that he is addressing more than a pile of decaying leaves. In the closing of section 1, Shelly makes the claim of “Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear” (14) which we know from the footnotes he is speaking of Hindu gods, one could perceive this as when the...