Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

These lines (13–14) form the rhyming couplet that concludes the opening canto. Impressively, the first canto consists of just one long compound sentence. The purpose of this sentence is to initiate the speaker’s flattering address to the west wind, which they refer to majestically as “thou breath of Autumn’s being” (line 1). The speaker characterizes the wind as an “enchanter” (line 3). With magic, it commands an “unseen presence” (line 2) that scatters dead leaves, redistributing them so that, come spring, their seeds will take root in new soil. After offering their lengthy description of the wind’s contribution to the rebirth and renewal of earthly life, the speaker punctuates the opening canto with these lines. This concluding couplet reiterates the key points of the preceding twelve lines. Namely, the speaker wants to praise the west wind as a “Wild Spirit” that has total liberty to move where and when it will. Furthermore, as a natural force that animates the seasons, the wind has the radical, even godlike ability to conjure life from death—hence the speaker’s claim that the wind is both “destroyer and preserver.” Most important of all, though, is the speaker’s insistent final plea for the wind to listen to them: “hear, oh hear!”

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
 
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable!

Lines 43–47 open the poem’s fourth canto, where the speaker transitions from their lengthy invocation of the west wind to the request they wish to make of this natural force. They begin by summarizing the praise they’ve already offered in the three prior cantos, where they’ve celebrated the wind’s great influence over the earth (canto 1), the sky (2), and the sea (3). The speaker references each of these domains in the first three lines of the passage quoted here. Importantly, even as the speaker outlines what they have already said about the wind, their speech here also shifts the focus to themself. Using conditional language, the speaker imagines themself in the place of dead leaves, clouds, and ocean water. Effectively, they want to take the place of these figures and thereby become subjected to the wind’s life-giving power. The speaker is putting themself at the wind’s mercy, articulating their own weakness and limitation in comparison to the wind’s “uncontrollable” strength. In this way, the speaker comports themself toward the wind in the way a supplicant might pray to a saint or a god. Such an expression of humility acts as a rhetorical follow-up to the preceding cantos of praise.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
 
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!

Lines 57–64 make up the first half of canto 5, in which the speaker finally makes plain what it is they want from the west wind. The speaker begins by calling on the wind to play them like a harp. This request likely alludes to an instrument known as an aeolian harp, which is named after the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus, and which is in fact activated by the wind. However, the specific use of the word lyre here also alludes to the ancient tradition of playing music to accompany the recitation of poetry. The speaker’s reference to music is therefore also, implicitly, a reference to poetry. The speaker makes this connection more explicit when they recall the image of dead leaves that first arose in the opening canto. Here, the speaker suggestively transforms tree leaves into the leaves of a book. These leaves contain inscriptions of the speaker’s “dead thoughts,” which will come to life once the wind scatters them across the earth. By blowing through the pages of poetry, the wind will initiate the audible “incantation of this verse,” which in turn will activate “the trumpet of a prophecy.”

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