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Imperatives

Important for the poem’s overall rhetorical effect is the speaker’s consistent use of verbs in the imperative mood. In grammatical terms, the imperative mood is used to issue commands, give instructions, or offer advice. In the case of “Ode to the West Wind,” the speaker frequently calls on the wind using imperatives. For example, the imperative is on display in the speaker’s brief but urgent refrain that punctuates cantos 1, 2, and 3: “oh hear!” (lines 14, 27, and 42). As the poem proceeds, however, the speaker’s imperatives take on increasing force. In canto 4, for instance, the speaker calls on the wind to “lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!” (line 53). Significantly, canto 5 consists almost entirely of imperatives. The speaker begins by commanding the wind: “Make my thy lyre” (line 57). Another pair of imperatives come a few lines later: “Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!” (lines 61–62). As the canto proceeds, the speaker unleashes a cascade of further commands (lines 63–69):

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
 
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
 
The trumpet of a prophecy!

The increasing density of imperatives reflects the urgency of the speaker’s desire to spread their revolutionary vision. They need the west wind’s help, and they need it now!

Supernatural Personages

The speaker of Shelley’s poem makes references to several supernatural personages. The first references appear in the opening stanza (lines 2–3)

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing

Here, the speaker likens the wind to a magical “enchanter” who possesses the power to command a powerful “unseen presence” in pursuit of “ghosts.” In canto 2, the speaker turns their attention to the sky, and to the wind’s power to agitate the clouds and thereby release “angels of rain and lightning” (line 18). Later in the same canto the speaker likens gathering storm clouds to “bright hair uplifted from the head / Of some fierce Maenad” (lines 20–21). In Greek mythology, maenads were female followers of Dionysus. Though not technically supernatural in origin, maenads took inspiration from their favored god, ritualistically working themselves into an ecstatic frenzy via drink and dance. Other references to supernatural entities in the poem are less direct, but no less important. For instance, the speaker frequently addresses the west wind as “Spirit” (line 61) or “Wild Spirit” (13). Taken together, these varied references invest nature with a sense of the supernatural, suggesting the radical potential for the transformation of the world.

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