Summary
We move from the sky to the Mediterranean Sea, where the speaker says the wind caused the water to roil, having been “waken[ed] from his summer dreams.” Previously, apparently, the sea had been calm, lulled to sleep by its clear waters. It was resting tranquilly next to an island in the Bay of Baiae. According to the speaker, when the water was calm, one could make out submerged palaces and towers underwater, which became more difficult to see when the water was disturbed. The ruins were overgrown with plant life, and the scene was so beautiful that the speaker, imagining this view, is forced to cry out—"So sweet, the senses faint picturing them!"
Again the speaker turns to plead to the wind directly, beginning by addressing it as a force that can create large canyons of waves in the Atlantic Ocean. Even the plants on the ocean floor are affected by the wind's influence, as the wind causes them to move and shed some of their components. The section closes with the speaker asking the wind to listen to him: "oh hear!"
Analysis
The speaker admires the wind for its ability to cause unrest and shake things up, just as he hopes his own poetry will be able to stir the hearts of people into action. The Mediterranean, then, is a symbol of the passive stagnancy of a society that has not yet experienced a revolution. The wind causing the waters to come alive is a metaphor for precisely such a revolution. Not only this, but when the sea is disturbed it obscures the "old palaces and towers" submerged in its depths. These ruins, which symbolize the past, are alluring to the speaker, but what they represent must be left behind if the world is to change. Thus, in obscuring the ruins, the wind destroys the past as part of its revolutionary process. To the speaker, this is a necessary feature of revolution and change: we must move beyond a worship of the past and look instead to the future.
The speaker goes on to suggest that all parts of the past, including the people and institutions who strive to maintain it, will be abolished by revolution. The extended metaphor regarding the Mediterranean Sea continues by showing the fates of the "sea-blooms and the oozy woods," which generally symbolize these defenders of the past. As the speaker explains, the wind causes these plants to "suddenly grow gray with fear" before they "tremble and despoil themselves." This bit of personification suggests that under the conditions of revolution, the people and things that work to uphold the past will not meet a happy fate.
