The Path of Shelleys Winged Thoughts :: Writing Poetry Papers

The Path of Shelleys Winged Thoughts Writing much of his numbers on the Continent, a sort from England where his readership lived, and dying only three years later on the stem of much of his best work, Percy Bysshe Shelley had little control over the transmittance of his poetry. At the time of its initial publication, Ode to the West Wind appeared as branch of a larger volume, entitled Prometheus Unbound, also the name of its signature, featured song which overshadowed Ode to the West Wind. Following Shelleys untimely death, his wife, Mary Shelley, dedicated herself to organizing and produce Shelleys work, and is largely responsible for the transmission of Shelleys work that occurred posthumously.Piecing together a publication and composition news report is particularly befitting for Percy Bysshe Shelleys Ode to the West Wind, for the theme of transmission of words and thoughts is interlaced conspicuously inside the lines of the song itself. In the final stanza of the poem, the poet beseeches the West Wind, a natural and augur life-force, to Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/ Like withered leaves to drive on a new birth (lines 63-64) Shelley continues to address transmission in the contiguous tercet, writing Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,/ Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind (lines 66-67). These imperatives contain Shelleys high-sounding expectations for the dissemination of his words however, when the actual path his words followed is studied, great discrepancy emerges between the ways in which Shelley envisi whizzd his poem entering the world, and the way it actually reached an audience. While today Ode to the West Wind is widely known, and see as one of Shelleys best poems, during the few years the poem and poet lived simultaneously, Shelleys visions for the transmission of Ode to the West Wind were limited, and boasted no divine intervention.Shelleys notebooks and preserved manuscripts provide much information about t he composition history behind Ode to the West Wind. In mid-October, 1819, Shelley walked along the river Arno, located near Florence, watched the dusk wind rustle and sweep the leaves strewn about the ground, and drew inspiration for the composition of Ode to the West Wind. Shelleys own note included with the published adaption of the poem states, This poem was conceivedone a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the late-blooming rains. (Wu, 859) His notebooks show the meticulous level of observation with which Shelley studied this scene one page of preliminary notes contains a drawing of a