Characters and speaker

The most important characters in the poem “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley are the speaker and the wind.

The speaker

The speaker could be a persona of the poet himself. He addresses the West Wind and makes a plea, although, for the first three sections, his plea is quite unclear and ambiguous. The speaker is clearly impressed with the West Wind, although, initially, he does not expose his reasons. At first, he becomes impressed with the wind’s power of clearing the leaves of autumn and of planting seeds in the ground:

“… O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low” (ll. 5-7)

Then, he is impressed by the wind’s fury, by its power to make seas and oceans rise. After his ode to the West Wind, he finally exposes his desires. First, he feels that he has no freedom and that he has become weighed down by time and age; this is why he asks the wind to infuse him with its power:

“… Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!” (ll. 61-62)

The speaker realises that becoming like the wind is impossible; he then asks ...