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A Word with the Wind

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Lord of days and nights that hear thy word of wintry warning,

Wind, whose feet are set on ways that none may tread,

Change the nest wherein thy wings are fledged for flight by morning,

Change the harbour whence at dawn thy sails are spread.

Not the dawn, ere yet the imprisoning night has half released her,

More desires the sun's full face of cheer, than we,

Well as yet we love the strength of the iron-tongued north-easter,

Yearn for wind to meet us as we front the sea.

All thy ways are good, O wind, and all the world should fester,

Were thy fourfold godhead quenched, or stilled thy strife:

Yet the waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester,

Whence the waters quicken shoreward, clothed with life.

Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing

Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath:

Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing

Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death.

Sharp and strange from inland sounds thy bitter note of battle,

Blown between grim skies and waters sullen-souled,

Till the baffled seas bear back, rocks roar and shingles rattle,

Vexed and angered and anhungered and acold.

Change thy note, and give the waves their will, and all the measure,

Full and perfect, of the music of their might,

Let it fill the bays with thunderous notes and throbs of pleasure,

Shake the shores with passion, sound at once and smite.

Sweet are even the mild low notes of wind and sea, but sweeter

Sounds the song whose choral wrath of raging rhyme

Bids the shelving shoals keep tune with storm's imperious metre,

Bids the rocks and reefs respond in rapturous chime.

Sweet the lisp and lulling whisper and luxurious laughter,

Soft as love or sleep, of waves whereon the sun

Dreams, and dreams not of the darkling hours before nor after,

Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love's day be done.

Yet shall darkness bring the awakening sea a lordlier lover,

Clothed with strength more amorous and more strenuous will,

Whence her heart of hearts shall kindle and her soul recover

Sense of love too keen to lie for love's sake still.

Let thy strong south-western music sound, and bid the billows

Brighten, proud and glad to feel thy scourge and kiss

Sting and soothe and sway them, bowed as aspens bend or willows,

Yet resurgent still in breathless rage of bliss.

All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up shoreward,

Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair,

Like a woodland lake's weak wavelets lightly lingering forward,

Soft and listless as the slumber-stricken air.

Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded,

Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled,

Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded,

Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled.

Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary,

Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird:

Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary

Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred.

Let thy clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token

How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine:

Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken,

Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine.

Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening

Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form:

All the world acclaims thee shifting sail again, and slackening

Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm.

Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken

Here at sunrise never hailed the sun and thee:

Turn thee then, and give them comfort, shed like rain and shaken

Far as foam that laughs and leaps along the sea.