Brian DuongMr. VoldingEnglish 4:241-03January 27, 2013Ode of Realization“If I were a cloud quick to fly with you...I would never have struggled/As thus with you in prayer in my sore need./Oh! lift me up like a wave, a leaf, a cloud! (Ode to the West Wind/IV/page 752:44,51-53). The speaker pays great homage to the West Wind through his ode, declaring that he is lost and in dire need of the wind's help. However, given that the ode is addressed to an inanimate force of nature, it is difficult to understand why the speaker would pay homage to a wind that has no control over its fate. Hoping to influence himself, Percy Bysshe Shelly presents a strange story of realization through the presence of a speaker and the violent, wild west wind. As a destroyer and preserver, the west wind has the power to influence the speaker with its ode towards it. . The speaker addresses and appeals to the West Wind as if it were a deity or spirit in the opening lines. The speaker declares: “O wild wind of the West, blows from the being of autumn/You, from whose invisible presence the dead leaves/Are driven away, like the ghosts of a fleeing enchanter” (751 : 1-3). The speaker expresses the power of nature by including the presence of death while calling upon the west wind as the breath of autumn. By stating "the invisible presence of dead leaves," the speaker can indicate two references to death: one reference to actual leaves falling from trees and dead or another reference to the wind leaving people for dead. Interpreting the wind to leave those who cross its path for dead, the invisible breath of the wind blows across the leaves like ghosts fleeing an enchanter. Although his comments about how the wind brings death may have a negative connotation, the speaker...... middle of paper ...... that he need not fear that his words or his thoughts be perceived as "dead" and therefore renders his previous statements useless. In order to invoke the west wind, the speaker tediously lists a series of actions that the wind has performed that illustrate its power: blowing away leaves of autumn, the cyclical "death" of the natural world, and stirring the seas and oceans The speaker's ode to the West Wind is greater and more powerful than one can imagine. The speaker's description of the wind is particularly powerful because it contains elements such as the West Wind and the Spring Wind, which can travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every cloud, leaf, and wave as it goes. measure of their passage Although the speaker never receives a response from the West Wind, he shows that man may be able to elevate his status by allowing nature to channel through him...