There are all kinds of reasons for objecting to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Selfish and often indifferent to the feelings of others (especially young women), while hypersensitive to his own, he was one of those intellectual monsters who think ideas matter more than people. But he was a great poet nonetheless. His ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of my favourite poems and I often think of it at this time of year when the trees are being stripped of their last leaves. ‘O wild West Wind,’ he writes,
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.
The tree is nature’s finest work of art, not on the topmost John Martin scale, of course, like the Grand Canyon, seen from above or, looking up, like a livid gash in the earth topped by blue sky, or the Himalayas of Kanchenjunga seen from Darjeeling — a colossal extended wedding-cake like Miss Havisham’s in its pristine form glittering in joy before decay set in.
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