Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

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 implores the West Wind to convey to him its own fierce and untamable energy, so that he can sing his songs freely and spontaneously.

In “Ode to the West Wind” Shelley subjectively treats the wind and gives it a mythical stature. For him, the West Wind is not only a natural phenomenon affecting changes in the natural world. It is Shelley’s symbol for regeneration, a vehicle of his revolutionary romanticism. In the poem, he equates his poetry with the West Wind. As the wind is a transforming power in nature, so can his poetry be a transforming power intellectually and poetically. Hence, lie urges the wind to be completely identified with him. Then it will do with his ideas what it does with the death leaves. He implores the wind to scatter his dead thoughts over the Universe and bring about welcoming change upon the earth. As the leaves and seeds driven by the West Wind burst into life in the Spring season, so let his thoughts bring a rebirth of the world and humanity. Shelley has a firm faith in his mission of bringing about the regeneration of mankind.