<P> Line 21 begins with "Of some fierce Maenad" and again the west wind is part of the second canto of the poem; here he is two things at once: first he is "dirge / Of the dying year" (23--24) and second he is "a prophet of tumult whose prediction is decisive"; a prophet who does not only bring "black rain, and fire, and hail" (28), but who "will burst" (28) it . The "locks of the approaching storm" (23) are the messengers of this bursting: the "clouds". </P> <P> Shelley also mentions that when the West Wind blows, it seems to be singing a funeral song about the year coming to an end and that the sky covered with a dome of clouds looks like a "sepulchre", i.e., a burial chamber or grave for the dying year or the year which is coming to an end . </P> <P> Shelley in this canto "expands his vision from the earthly scene with the leaves before him to take in the vaster commotion of the skies". This means that the wind is now no longer at the horizon and therefore far away, but he is exactly above us . The clouds now reflect the image of the swirling leaves; this is a parallelism that gives evidence that we lifted "our attention from the finite world into the macrocosm". The "clouds" can also be compared with the leaves; but the clouds are more unstable and bigger than the leaves and they can be seen as messengers of rain and lightning as it was mentioned above . </P> <P> This refers to the effect of west wind in the water . The question that comes up when reading the third canto at first is what the subject of the verb "saw" (33) could be . On the one hand there is the "blue Mediterranean" (30). With the "Mediterranean" as subject of the canto, the "syntactical movement" is continued and there is no break in the fluency of the poem; it is said that "he lay, / Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, / Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, / And saw in sleep old palaces and towers" (30--33). On the other hand it is also possible that the lines of this canto refer to the "wind" again . Then the verb that belongs to the "wind" as subject is not "lay", but the previous line of this canto, that says Thou who didst waken...And saw" (29, 33). But whoever--the "Mediterranean" or the "wind"--"saw" (33) the question remains whether the city one of them saw, is real and therefore a reflection on the water of a city that really exists on the coast; or the city is just an illusion . Pirie is not sure of that either . He says that it might be "a creative you interpretation of the billowing seaweed; or of the glimmering sky reflected on the heaving surface". Both possibilities seem to be logical . To explain the appearance of an underwater world, it might be easier to explain it by something that is realistic; and that might be that the wind is able to produce illusions on the water . With its pressure, the wind "would waken the appearance of a city". From what is known of the "wind" from the last two cantos, it became clear that the wind is something that plays the role of a Creator . Whether the wind creates real things or illusions does not seem to be that important . Baiae's bay (at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples) actually contains visible Roman ruins underwater (that have been shifted due to earthquakes .) Obviously the moss and flowers are seaweed . It appears as if the third canto shows--in comparison with the previous cantos--a turning - point . Whereas Shelley had accepted death and changes in life in the first and second canto, he now turns to "wistful reminiscence (, recalls) an alternative possibility of transcendence". From line 26 to line 36 he gives an image of nature . But if we look closer at line 36, we realise that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight, because it obviously means, so sweet that one feels faint in describing them . This shows that the idyllic picture is not what it seems to be and that the harmony will certainly soon be destroyed . A few lines later, Shelley suddenly talks about "fear" (41). This again shows the influence of the west wind which announces the change of the season . </P>

Figure of speech in ode to the west wind