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“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (poetry reading)

On the archaic pronunciation wind to rhyme with unkind in the last line: I have seen this described as eye-rhyme, but it's no such thing. Here's a excerpt from "A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language." by John Walker, 1839. "These two modes of pronunciation have long been contending for superiority, till at last the former seems to have gained a complete victory, except in the territories of rhyme. Here the poets claim a privilege, and readers seem willing to grant them, by pronouncing this word, when it ends a verse, so as to rhyme with the word it is coupled with: "For as in bodies, thus in souls we find what wants in in blood and spirits filled with wind" But in prose this regular and analogical pronunciation borders on the antiquated and pedantic. What could have been the cause of this deviation from the general rule in this word, it is not easy to guess; they were both bound to their true sound by the fetters of rhyme; but these fetters which are supposed to alter the pronunciation of some words by linking familiar sounds, have not been strong enough to restrain these from a capricious irregularity. Jonathan Swift used to jeer at those who pronounced wind with the i short, by saying "I have a great MIND to FIND why you pronounce it WIND" Also "Blow, blow thou winter wind Thousd art not so unkind As man's ingratitude." O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being— Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ...