With "Ode to the West Wind," Percy Bysshe Shelley presents a poetic prayer
             filled with musical metaphors and themes of death, rebirth, inspiration,
             and liberation. The poem possesses dynamic language to convey the
             formidable forces of the West Wind, autumnal energy "whose unseen
             presence the leaves dead Are driven" (2-3). The leaves refer not only to
             the literal leaves off trees but also to leaves of paper, on which Shelley
             conveys his messages to the world. "Ode to the West Wind" is largely a plea
             for both personal and universal transformation. The West Wind transforms
             the natural world, killing off all that is dead and decaying and making
             room for the "sweet buds" of Spring and the New Year (11). So too can the
             "breath of Autumn's being" drive Shelley's "dead thoughts over the
             universe," (63). Through his poetry, and renewed and revitalized by
             universal energy, Shelley hopes to awaken and enlighten a sleeping world.
             Musical metaphors link with the central images of wind and air, for Shelley
             refers exclusively to wind-dependent instruments: the lyre, the clarion,
             and the trumpet. Moreover, the poet ends the first three sections with a
             plea, "oh hear!" "Ode to the West Wind" evokes and lauds the West Wind as a
             tangible and ephemeral force affecting both the natural world and the
             In the first section of the ode, Shelley refers to "winged seeds"
             which "lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave," (7-8).
             Winged seeds signify airborne potency, new life, and rebirth, as seeds
             contain the blueprint for new life and their wings carry them through the
             air onto new soil. Seeds are born from flowers nearing decay; carried by
             the wind they float and fall, finding their way into organic graves beneath
             the ground. There they lie like corpses in a cold, dark womb of earth.
             Experiencing a symbolic death, the seeds hearken to the clarion call of
             spring, which awakens a "dreaming earth," ...