WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Ode to the West Wind

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads an excerpt from Percy Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, which celebrates the destructive spirit of the West Wind as a harbinger of renewal.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading Percy Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. In this poem, Shelley wonders at the power of the fearsome West Wind and asks to be joined to it. This West Wind is essentially the spirit of fall, which the poet imagines as driving out the dead leaves and bringing destruction. though as we will see this destruction is for the purpose of bringing new life. We see in part three that the decadent relics of older times tremble in fear of the West Wind

because the fall winds must clear out the decadent in order to bring renewal. After all, autumn and spring are sisters. With all that said, let's dive in. Ode to the West Wind by Percy Shelley. Part 1. A 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 azor's sister of the spring shall blow her clarion or the dreaming earth, and fill, driving sweet buds like flocks. to feed an air, with living hues and odors plain and hill. Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere, destroyer and preserver, here, oh here. Part two. 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 thineary surge, like the bright hair, uplifted from the head of some fierce manad, 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 sepulcher, vaulted with all thy congregated might of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere black rain and fire and hail will burst, oh here. Part three. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams, the blue Mediterranean, where he lay, lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, beside a Pernus Isle in Baez Bay, and saw, in-sleep, old palaces and towers, quivering within the waves in tensor day. All overgrown with azermas and flowers, so sweet the sense faints picturing them. Thou, for whose path the Atlantic's level powers cleave themselves into chasms, while far above, 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 spoil themselves, oh here. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following The Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to The Poetree Fix at gmail.com. Join me next week and we'll be continuing our journey through Ode to the Westwind.