Percy Bysshe Shelley - Fair copy of Ode to the West Wind

Part of the Shelly's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley's best-known poem was written in Florence in late 1819.

Technically it is a series of four sonnets written in 'terza rima', the verse-form Shelley would use again, with similar fluency, in his final poem, The Triumph of Life. The west wind is an agent of change: with seasonal rejuvenation comes a personal rebirth which will, in turn, inspire the 'unawakened Earth'.