Percy Bysse Shelley wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in a wooded area near Florence, Italy in one sitting on October 25, 1819. The poem was first published in 1820 in the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems. Also published in that collection was the lyrical drama that many consider to be Shelley's masterpiece, the titular Prometheus Unbound, a response to the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.
According to Shelley, the day on which "Ode to the West Wind" was written was windy and experienced hail and rain. The poem is an ode, which means that it is a poem celebrating something. In this case, Shelley celebrates the "West Wind," lauding its freedom, recalcitrance and transformative power. Shelley combines the two traditional types of odes—Pindaric odes, which are addressed to public people, places, or events, and Horatian odes, which are addressed to the poet's private affairs—by considering political and personal revolution side by side.
As one might guess from even a superficial knowledge of Shelley's life and beliefs, the "West Wind" that he admires so much is in part a metaphor for political change and revolution. He portrays a wind with the power to destroy on one hand and the power of regeneration on the other, suggesting that change cannot occur without destruction and loss. Or, in the language of the poem: "If Winter comes," spring must follow.
At the same time, however, the change that Shelley anticipates is personal just as much as it is political. "Ode to the West Wind" is also about the speaker, a poet who feels he has become stuck on the "thorns of life." The speaker admires the wind because it offers an alternative model of life, one that is unrestricted and bold. Over time, he becomes confident that his poetry has the ability to bring about great change. In making this realization, the poet himself is transformed into someone who is confident in his ability to change the world. He grows closer to who he was as a child, when he was "The comrade of [the wind's] wanderings over Heaven."
"Ode to the West Wind" is a terza rima broken up into five sections. Each section is a fourteen-line sonnet. As in traditional terza rimas, the final word of each stanza's middle line creates the rhyme for the first and third lines of the next stanza. The rhymes for the couplets at the end of each section are based on the final word of the previous stanza's middle line.
