Rhythm and rhyme

Here, we will address the rhythm and rhyme of the poem “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. This is very important, as the rhyme scheme is that of terza rima – a technique employed by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri – and the rhythm is specific to an English sonnet.

The poem “Ode to the West Wind” is structured into five sections written in terza rima, each of the five sections being comprised of four tercets and a couplet.

Terza rima means that lines are structured in groups of three; the middle line of one set becomes the outside rhyme of the next set. This way, the poem rhymes according to the scheme ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, and EE. Here is one example in which we have highlighted the final word of the middle line of one set and the way it becomes a rhyme for the following set:

“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-stri...