Among his contemporaries, Shelley was the most zealous in temperament and radical in attitude. He is the most purely visionary poet in English literature, with his far-sighted philosophy and futuristic ideals His fervent anticipation of a world devoid of malevolence and crammed with love, his high-ceilinged idealism and the prophetic ardour render him one of the most influential English poets. Shelley’s poetry is infused with his idealism. He thrived with a craving to unshackle mankind from the clutches of morbidity and lack of liberty. This lent to his poetry an elemental force, a vehemence as vigorous as that of the Wild West Wind. In spite of his pervading optimism, Personal Despondency is another recurrent aspect of this Romantic:

“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d

ne too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.”

Ode to the West Wind is one of the unsurpassed poems of all time. The poem in terza rima was conjured up and written in a wood that skirts the Arno. It puts across Shelley’s spirit of liberty which is tempestuous and prevailing as the West Wind itself. The poet talks to the West Wind and beckons his spirit to descend upon him and act through\ his lips as the trumpet of a prophecy to the quiescent world.…