Explain: “O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed ....................With living hues and odours plain and hill:”

Explain:

“O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:”

Ans: In the first stanza of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind from which the lines are quoted, the poet describes the activities of the west wind on the earth. The west wind scatters the decayed leaves before it and deposits the seeds in their dark wintry beds till they awaken into life with the coming of the Spring wind. The west wind drives the seeds to dark and cold ground where they lie buried in the cold winter. The seeds lie still and seem to be lifeless like dead bodies in their graves. Warm and gentle west wind of Spring blows its trumpet and inspires new life into all Nature. Seeds also rise up into life as young plants. The gentle west wind compared to a shepherd and the seeds to sheep. Just as the shepherd takes the sheep to the pasture land, so the west wind of Spring takes the seeds out into air. The west wind plays the part of a preserver and destroyer.

These lines strike the keynote of the poem. The poem works out the theme of death and rebirth in powerful symbols. It is announced in the first stanza. The wind drives away the dead leaves and conducts the seeds, apparently cold and dead to their graves; but the graves are also the cradles in which they are to be reborn in the Spring.