Percy Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a portrayal of Shelley's rebellious motto towards the ideals and values during the Romantic era and his desire to escape from these customary beliefs reflected by the ways of nature.
             The poem begins with Shelley describing the West Wind as the "breath of Autumn's being" (1, I) and "from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing" (2-3). The West Wind is described as the force or "breath" that creates autumn's atmosphere. The fallen dead leaves are driven by this force, resembling ghosts fleeing. The leaves represent the ideals and values of the era in which Shelley lived, and the West Wind symbolizes the driving force, with which Shelley hopes to seek freedom. With words such as "death" and "ghosts", the reader is able to sense Shelley's feelings towards the ideal viewpoints of England during the time. It is quite clear Shelley perceives such ideas to be of much unimportance, if not useless, by using this death imagery. He continues his denunciation of the idealistic beliefs in the next lines of the poem by using strong imagery of colors. "Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red" (4) all give a sense of some sort of illness. Shelley confirms the readers instinctual reaction towards the colors used to describe the leaves when he goes on to say, "Pestilence-stricken multitudes!" (5). Shelley not only indicates that these leaves (idealistic beliefs) are sickly in color but also are an epidemic that has conquered in multitudes. Essentially, Shelley is stating how the evil of ideology has diseased the minds of the people. The leaves of the trees in autumn, as they turn the sickly colors and ultimately fall off and die, resemble the "pestilence-stricken" idealistic beliefs and values that exist in the world.
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