What does the West Wind stand for?Ode to the West Wind is a symbolic poem. WestWindreferstoapowerfulphenomenonofnature.WestWindiseitheradestroyer（oftheoldworld）orapreserver（ofthenewthings）.Westwindisamessenger，tospreadrevolutionarymessagefarandwide. It also represents liberty, the untamable nature and power for Shelley. The symbolic meanings of the West Wind are as follows:(1)It symbolizes regeneration which follows the destruction and death of winter.(2)Personally, Shelley sees it as a force that will reinvigorate him, the wind of spirit and inspiration at a time when he feels his own powers as a poet are on the decline.(3)Socially and politically, the wind represents the destructive and revolutionary energies that had been seen in Europe over the previous 30 years, overthrowing long-established and corrupt social order in France and Italy.(4)Spiritually, it is an abstract expression or manifestation of the spirit within nature, a driving force behind the turning wheel of the seasons and the cycles of life and death.What does the poet feel for the wind?The poet feels that the wind is wild, uncontrollable and untamable. Shelley eulogizes the west wind as a powerful phenomenon of nature that is both destroyer and preserver. The wind enjoys boundless freedom and has the power to spread messages far and wide. By praising the west wind, Shelley expresses his eagerness to dance with the west wind. He feels enthusiastic and optimistic about the wind as well as the revolution. What does the nightingale symbolize?The bird may symbolize more than one thing. Possible meanings include: 1) pure or unmixed joy; 2) the poet, with the birds song being his poetry;3) the beauties of nature;4) the ideal; 5) Keats poetic inspiration and satisfaction;6) immortality;7) freedom;How does the poet portray his identification with the nightingale?The poets identification with the nightingale is mainly achieved by his colorful imagination. The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but it does not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate that humans cannot expect. The contrast between the immortal nightingale and mortal man, sitting in the garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination. The poet begins by explaining the nature and cause of the sadness he is experiencing. He feels as if he had taken some poison or sedating drug. This feeling is in fact the result of a deep awareness of the happiness of the nightingale he hears singing. Here, the nightingales song puts him into the realm of imagination. He longs for some intoxicant that will let him achieve union with the nightingale, take him out of the world, and allow him to forget human suffering and despair and the transience of all experience. Hearing the song of the nightingale, the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. He wishes that he would be as free and joyous as the nightingale. He compares the nightingale as the Dryad, which clearly shows the poets eagerness for free and for the beautiful nature.His first thought is to reach the birds state through alcohol-in the second stanza, he longs for a draught of vintage to transport him out of himself. The rapture of poetic inspiration matches the endless creative rapture of the nightingales music and lets the speaker, in stanzas five through seven, imagine himself with the bird in the darkened forest. Here, the poet wishes for flight and for identification with the bird in its world, which is tranquil and full of happiness. In an extremely imperfect, unharmonious world of reality, the poet yearns for a way to escape the difficulties of reality and mortal life. In an attempt to accomplish his escape, he tries to enter the life of the nightingale. He realizes, however, that the ultimate form of forgetfulness, of escape from the troubles of life, would be death.The ecstatic music even encourages the speaker to embrace the idea of dying, of painlessly succumbing to death while enraptured by the nightingales music and never experiencing any further pain or disappointment. The poet, thinking back to the classical world of the Roman emperors and to the Old Testament world of Ruth, considers how its song has been heard for so many centuries. Keats takes us even further back, into a fairy world, a landscape both magical and yet forlorn. With this word forlorn, the spell is broken: the poet returns to the self, to the present. Fancy, he claims, has failed him once more. He again becomes aware of the landscape around him and the birds song begins to fade, leaving him wondering whether his experience was a vision or a waking dream.