If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind - English Essay

If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind

English Essay on "If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind"

“A quickening life from the earth’s heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos, in its stream emerged
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with fife’s sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spread in love’s delight.
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.”
(Return of Spring -- Shelley)

Poets have often stung about winter and spring. They are nor merely passing phases and aspects of nature, but they point to the whole world of change, great upheavals and revolution. For the imaginative minds, they express deep philosophy of life yearning and hope, lull and rebirth, death and awakening.

The Romantic Movement in English poetry was marked with soaring imagination and deep emotions. It was also a period of individualism, expression personality, interest in nature and social problems. The firmament of Romantic Revival is adorned with four bright stars — Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Byron. They were also solitaries and lived in their own worlds of imagination. The were also unacknowledged legislators of world. They were like visionaries who build their own world of ideals. Their minds were preoccupied with the past; but eyes were set on the future.

Two things were common with them, one was imagination and the other tendency of escapism. They sought escape from the realities and brutalities of life into the world of imagination and idealism. Wordsworth was the high priest of Nature and lie sought shelter in Nature. For him nature was animate, physician, councilor teacher, law-giver arid nourisher of man’s moral being. Keats, the peer of Shakespeare, was a worshipper of cult of beauty in all its aspects -- physical, mental and moral. Shelley whose line forms the caption of the essay, was a visionary and sought shelter in love -- love of mankind. The spirit of Asia in his dramatic poem Prometheus Unbound stands for universal love of mankind. The legend of Prometheus has long been used as a symbol of revolt. Shelley sees in the deliverance of Prometheus the end of tyrant (Zeus) and the return of golden age in innocence, beauty and freedom. The chorus pronounces the happy change in the following lines:

..from spring gathering up beneath
Whose mild wind shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdmen know
That the white-thorn soon will blow;
Wisdom, Justice, Love and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft wind be
To shepherd boy, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee.

The concluding line of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind If winter comes can spring be far behind!, is trumpet of prophecy. Shelley was not satisfied with the order in which he lived. In his sufferings he saw the suffering world as he says: I have fallen on the thorn of life, I bleed. The very nature of life is painful as is clear from the famous lines:

We look before and after
And pine what is not,
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of
Saddest thought. (Sky Lark)

It is ecstasy of sorrow; his longing is that of a moth. He was champion of mankind and dreamt of a new world order full of freedom. Justice, love and peace. The memorable line the caption is message of goodwill and hope for the whole mankind. Winter and spring are used in figurative sense. They stand for dullness and action, for sleep and reawakening, for darkness and brightness, for fear and hope and for period of suffering and period of joy, the fiery spirit of the poet, his radical thoughts, his poetic imagination, ambitious myths of freedom and hope for a new world order all are reflected ii the Ode to the West Wind of which the title of the essay is a ringing close. He displays a world of his own, intensely his own. He comes out as a critic of human bondage.

It is the feeling of awe that is chiefly called forth by winter. Lo! the winter is past. The angel of spring has reed off the polar mantle from air and earth, and as again berthing the kindling spirit of vitality in man and nature. But spring is more than a welcome transition from cold to genial warmth; it is a change from barrenness and tameness of earth to beauty and variety in the aspect of nature. In fact spring brings inspiring thoughts and joys for the poet. Heaven smiles on man and in Nature.

After discoursing on the quickening power of the West wind on the earth, over the ocean and in the sky, the poet invokes the wild spirit of the wind to make him its lyre and spread his words or message of new happy order over the universe. The poet, in spite of being sad and dejected has not given up hope; an instead of being pessimistic he is optimistic. The following lines of poem forcefully bring out the poet’s faith:

Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of prophecy! 0 Wind
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

The beautiful apostrophe — the direct address made to the wind, is not a momentary or casual invocation but an everlasting and reassuring message of hope and goodwill for the ever suffering humanity, by the great champion of mankind. When we see around us and cast a glance on the affairs of the world, we find the same despondency, the same weight of sufferings, the same vicious circle of social injustice, birth of good nature, want of genuine love for mankind, lack of wisdom on the part of world leader, and above all absolute absence of peace -- peace within us or peace in the external world. What an agony to the spirit of the dead man! Time the hoary headed agent of God stands a witness to it.

What we now see in the world, casts a gloom on the thinking minds and feeling souls. Though we are very proud of our con start march along the path of civilisation and our spectacular achievements in the field of science and technology, we have got far away from a just and happy wend order. Class religion, the peoples embrace. Everywhere, the poor and working class are slaves of the rich. The rich subsist on labour of the poor — those who till the soil and produce all kinds of goods for the avaricious land lords, the industrial magnets and the dwellers of luxurious houses. Economic exploitation and political bossing have become order of the day. The rich are becoming richer day by day and the gap between the Haves and the Have not is growing ever wider. The conditions in the third world including Pakistan are very pathetic, rather shocking.

Mutual respect and regard for the good have evaporated from the ranks and files of the people. Every body is proud of ganging his own gait. Corruption — the hydra headed monster is rife everywhere. Knowledge has come but wisdom has departed. As it is, knowledge is proud that it knows much; but wisdom is humble that it knows little. When selfish and characterless people come to the helm, the wise people retire into the background. Modern civilisation is lop-sided; for it is over-weighed on the side of knowledge ahd less on the side of moral or character. Modern man has a stunted soul in a gigantic body. Ideas — scientific, economic and political, dominate the scene but finer and noble emotions have departed from the life of modern homo sapiens. The world is under the grip of wintry winds.

There is a dearth of noble characters, and moral values like truth, goodness and justice have become hollow ideals. Religion is now being paid only tip-service and the sea of Faith...Lay like the folds of bright girdle furled. Not truth but acceptability has become the way of the world Justice lingers in this materialistic society and Daniel is shy of appearing on the throne. Judgement and not justice rules the Palace and the Courts for logic of law and not the tenaciousness of truth holds the upper hand. Money can purchase everything. The conditions in Muslim countries are worse in respect of moral, economic and social affairs.

There is no human dignity and cause of honour left in modern society. Political rivalry and economic injustice figure most on the Agenda of the UN that stands for establishment of permanent peace and removal of social evils and injustice. Pride, hatred, fear, narrow mindedness and jealousy have become international creeds. They are the root causes of war. Humanity cannot survive without mutual respect, cooperation and love. People are killed like flies in wars; but they are now being killed in civil strife. Peace! Peace! Las become a distant cry for the politicians of the world, for they put their heads together but do not put their hearts together.

Under the cold and callous conditions prevailing in the world, more so in our country, the trumpet of Shelley’s prophecy must be sounded and listened to. The whole of mankind needs the magic hand of spring to revive the hope of suffering humanity. There is tension in the whole world. War-mania, false propaganda, suppression of the voice of the poor and the oppressed, spells of drug mafia, murder of the innocent, poverty and ignorance, misuse of the surplus for creating mischief and dragging the peace loving peoples into warring factions, all call for the revival and restoration of area of wisdom, freedom, justice, love and peace.

The same note of Shelley’s prophecy has been sounded in these words: -
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world…
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

Let us not be despaired of blessing of Allah. The Christians believe in the coming of new prosperous order the millennium. The Buddhist believe in future bliss through Karma - deeds. The Muslims are promised of spring here and Hereafter through holding fast to the rope of Allah. The road to the emancipation lies in spiritual rebirth the promised spring

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