"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is" was Percy Shelley's request of what?

In this situation, Percy Shelley as the speaker is asking the West Wind for something. He wants the wind to turn him into its lyre. With this quote from 'Ode to the West Wind", Shelley is expressly hoping that his poetry will affect social and/or personal change in the future.

Literary scholars tell us that the lyre is a reference to the Eolian lyre which plays rising and falling chords when affected by the wind. If he, the poet, is the lyre, then the West Wind will play/carry his poetry to new places and times. We are told, "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe. Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!"

Even if his poetry is forgotten, during his own lifetime or after his death, Shelley hopes that this forgotten phase (compared with Winter) will be followed by a "Spring" during which his poetry will again be appreciated.

The wind is a natural phenomenon to be compared with creativity, untamed forces, and the movement of time and history. The poet, Shelley, sees the wind as the vehicle of time and ideas.