The Wind

Blow harder, wind, and drive     My blood from hands and face back to the heart.     Cry over ridges and down tapering coombs,     Carry the flying dapple of the clouds     Over the grass, over the soft-grained plough,     Stroke with ungentle hand the hill's rough hair             Against its usual set.     Snatch at the reins in my dead hands and push me     Out of my saddle, blow my labouring pony     Across the track. You only drive my blood     Nearer the heart from face and hands, and plant there,     Slowly burning, unseen, but alive and wonderful,             A numb, confusd joy!     This little world's in tumult. Far away     The dim waves rise and wrestle with each other     And fall down headlong on the beach. And here     Quick gusts fly up the funnels of the valleys     And meet their raging fellows on the hill-tops,             And we are in the midst.     This beating heart, enriched with the hands' blood,     Stands in the midst and feels the warm joy burn     In solitude and silence, while all about     The gusts clamour like living, angry birds,     And the gorse seems hardly tethered to the ground.             Blow louder, wind, about     My square-set house, rattle the windows, lift     The trap-door to the loft above my head     And let it fall, clapping. Yell in the trees,     And throw a rotted elm-branch to the ground,     Flog the dry trailers of my climbing rose,             Make deep, O wind, my rest!