Ode to the West Wind
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff at the University of Virginia

Sources

London : C. and J. Ollier, 1820"Ode to the West Wind" was first printed in a volume entitled Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts, With Other Poems, published by the London publishing partnership of the brothers Charles and James Ollier. We have taken our edition and page images from the Google Books version of that first print edition.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ode to the West Wind">. Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts, With Other Poems, C. and J. Ollier, 1820 , 188-192 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/ShelleyP/shelley-ode. Accessed: 2025-01-02T15:22:27.654Z

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188 ODE TO THE WEST WIND.*^Ode Ode*This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. [Author's note] [Audio File]^AudioAudio

Librivox recording of "Ode to the West Wind," read by Leonard Wilson I. 1O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 2Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 3Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Page 188

Footnotes

Ode_*This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. [Author's note]