Ode to the West Wind

“England in 1819” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)

This is one of Shelley’s earlier, more overtly political poems. He uses the form of a Shakespearean sonnet to savagely critique the English monarchy. The visceral language drips with disgust:         “Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, / But leechlike to their fainting country cling / Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow” (Lines 4-6). Shelley wrote this poem in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre, a clash between English soldiers and peaceful protestors resulting in 15 civilian deaths.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)

One of Keats’s most iconic poems and one of the most iconic Romantic odes, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” puts the Romantic obsession with art and imagination on full display. Like Shelley in “Ode to the West Wind,” Keats elevates a mundane subject with inventive language, building on his images to make observations about the human condition.

“Address to A Child During A Boisterous Winter Evening” by Dorothy Wordsworth (1815)

This poem by fellow Romantic poet (and sister of the much-more-famous William Wordsworth) Dorothy Wordsworth bears some strange similarities to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.