The poet( PB Shelley ) wishes that the west wind could affect him the way it does leaves and clouds and waves. He asks the wind to play him like an instrument, bringing out his sadness. Maybe the wind can even help him to send his ideas all over the world and his ideas might inspire others.
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, O 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 airy 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: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer
dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled 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 grey with fear,
And tremble and
despoil themselves: O 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 the skyey speed
Scarce seemed 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 chained and bowed
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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to
unawakened earth
The
trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
http://youtu.be/58UI2i-n5Qw
