(1) Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Ans. The quoted lines occur in the celebrated poem “Ode to the West Wind” by the great Romantic poet P. B. Shelley. Here the poet speaks about the dual aspect of West Wind as destroyer and a preserver. The wind is a wild spirit, the power of destruction, blowing everywhere. The West Wind is called the destroyer as well as the preserver, because while it destroys the leaves, it preserves seeds to germinate later.

The West Wind destroys only the useless decayed things, dry, dead leaves, that are not green symbol of life but have sickly colours, “paIe”, “black”, “yellow”, “hectic red”. The wind carries away the dead leaves and piles them on the ground where they will mould and become fertile soil for the new plants in spring. It carries the light seeds away fro the parent-plants to scatter them everywhere, so that in Spring they would start a life of their own. The seeds lie buried safely in the ground all through Winter until the warm Spring breeze, Azure sister of West Wind, will blow, thawing the hard soil so that the seeds could come out! sprout through the softened earth and Spring flowers quickly bloom every where to adorn the world with new and dazzling colour. Thus the West Wind is at the same time destroyer and preserver.