This blog post is about ‘Ode to the West Wind Quiz‘. You are going to face a quiz of 20 multiple choice questions that cover the poem.
The west wind is a force of nature that is both preserver and destroyer. Throughout the poem, its power is evident as it interacts with various elements of nature. In autumn, its strength is visible as it carries dead or fallen leaves, while in the sky, it scatters clouds across the sky. The reach of the wind extends even to the sea, where it blows the waves around a solitary island.
The poet, observing the west wind’s influence, expresses a desire to get the characteristics of the wind, wishing to be like a leaf, cloud, or wave swept along in its current. He yearns to be elevated above the challenges of life, symbolized by “the thorns,” and to exist in a state of liberation and unrestrained movement, mirroring the west wind’s “tameless, and swift, and proud” nature.
The poet’s ultimate aspiration is to make a bond with the wind, becoming an instrument through which its essence can be expressed. He likes himself to be a lyre, requesting the wind to play upon him, thereby infusing him with its untamed spirit. Through this union, the speaker feels his own voice gaining the strength and reach of the wind, enabling him to share his poetry with the world, awakening the mankind with his words.
Text of Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
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
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV
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! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
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!
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! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Ode to the West Wind Quiz
Are you ready for the quiz on P.B. Shelley’s poem? Enjoy while conducting the quiz.
Source of the quiz : Women’s College Agartala & Litcharts
Attend previous quiz : Night of the Scorpion Quiz Part -1
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