Friday, November 27, 2015

Please comment upon the following quote from "Ode to the West Wind."And, by the incantation of this verse, 65 Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd...

The quote you have cited comes from the second half of the
last stanza of this famous poem, and relates the imprecation of the speaker to be used
by the West Wind to spread the kind of revolutionary energy and passion that the wind
represents around the world. It is important to read this stanza in its entirety, so
that images that are developed can be identified and understood. For example, the image
of "ashes and sparks" to which the speaker comapres his words and verse can be matched
with the idea of "withered leaves" that comes just before this quote. Both are images of
apparent death and inanimate objects that can actually be used to spark new life, as the
"ashes and sparks" can set fire and enflame other objects that they come into contact
with.


The final lines represent a rather interesting shift
in terms of the poet's perception of himself as he moves from viewing himself as a mere
passive object being blown about by the wind like everything else to realising that he
can be an instrument of the wind, the "trumpet of a prophecy," that can be used to
convey a message to the world. The poem ends with the poet's hope that his words can be
used in this way.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...