How we cite our quotes: (line)
Quote #1
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! (43-47)
Freedom is one of the most important objects of desire for the speaker of this poem, but ironically his idea of near-freedom is the state of a leaf or cloud carried at the mercy of the wind. Treasure this: Shelley’s not big on irony.
Quote #2
If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. (47-52)
Like the speakers in poems by other Romantic poets (William Wordsworth comes to mind), the speaker here recalls that he had a different relationship to the natural world when he was young. For the Romantics, youth is a privileged time, when Man and Nature are mysteriously (and mystically) close.
Quote #3
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! (53-54)
The literal "lift" of the wind is juxtaposed with the metaphorical "fall" onto the "thorns of life."
Quote #4
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. (55-56)
The speaker describes himself as "too like" the West Wind – that is, he’s too much like a wild natural power, instead of an adaptable human being. Notice that this is basically bragging: he’s saying "I’m so quick and proud and larger-than-life, I’m not like a person at all, more a force of Nature!" He’s glad to be somewhat inhuman.
Quote #5
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own! (57-58)
The speaker positions himself between two comparisons to the natural world here. First, he suggests that he – or at least his mind – is like an autumn forest, where the leaves are falling and everything is decaying. But then he suggests that another force of nature, the West Wind, could turn him into its instrument and use him to create beautiful art.
Quote #6
Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! (61-62)
Here the speaker demands complete unity between himself and the West Wind, between man and the natural world; but the difference between a human "spirit" and Nature’s "Spirit" is more than just a matter of one capital letter.