Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem, as with every poem this week, is going to be by Percy Shelley. He was one of the

major English romantic poets, and he lived from 1792 to 1822. So like John Keats,

he died before he was 30. He was just 29 when he died in what is now Italy. He lived a very

dramatic, very dramatic life. seemed to be a somewhat dramatic guy, but boy, was he quite talented.

You probably know him for poems like Oszymandius to a Skylark and several others. And the poem that I'm going to be reading

today and then this whole week is called Ode to the West Wind. It's a five-part poem, and each of the

five parts has four stanzas with the same structure

and the same form.

So I thought this seemed like a good time of year to go ahead and spend some real time

on this poem.

Stretch it out a little bit.

So instead of reading the whole thing all, you know, 45 lines or something

and not really getting to comment on it and then moving on, I'm going to read each of those,

what is it, 14 lines, and then I'll read that first section of the poem again and just

we'll treat it almost like its own poem, is what I'm trying to say.

So here is part one of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven like ghosts From an enchanter fleeing

Yellow and black and pale and hectic red

Pestilence-stricken multitudes

O thou who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

...