The Winds' Possession

When winds blow high and leaves begin to fall,
And the wan sunlight flits before the blast;
When fields are brown and crops are garnered all,
And rooks, like mastered ships, drift wide and fast;
Maid Artemis, that feeleth her young blood
Leap like a freshet river for the sea,
Speedeth abroad with hair blown in a flood
To snuff the salt west wind and wanton free.

Then would you know how brave she is, how high
Her ancestry, how kindred to the wind,
Mark but her flashing feet, her ravisht eye
That takes the boist'rous weather and feels it kind:
And hear her eager voice, how tuned it is
To Autumn's clarion shrill for Artemis.

Maurice Henry Hewlett

Maurice Henry Hewlett was an English historical novelist, poet, and essayist. His works often blended history and romance and he was known for his vivid characterizations and settings. Among his many works, 'The Forest Lovers' and 'Richard Yea-and-Nay' are some of the best known. Hewlett was a contemporary and sometimes critic of modernist trends in literature, favoring more traditional storytelling techniques.

Maurice Henry Hewlett

The Chamber Idyll

Maurice Henry Hewlett, Simple Poetry

The Argive Women[2]

Maurice Henry Hewlett, Simple Poetry

Quel Giorno Più ...

Maurice Henry Hewlett, Simple Poetry

English

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The Wind's Prophecy

I travel on by barren farms,
And gulls glint out like silver flecks
Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks,
And bellies down with black alarms.
I say: "Thus from my lady's arms
I go; those arms I love the best!"
The wind replies from dip and rise,
"Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest."

A distant verge morosely gray
Appears, while clots of flying foam
Break from its muddy monochrome,
And a light blinks up far away.
I sigh: "My eyes now as all day
Behold her ebon loops of hair!"
Like bursting bonds the wind responds,
"Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!"

From tides the lofty coastlands screen
Come smitings like the slam of doors,
Or hammerings on hollow floors,
As the swell cleaves through caves unseen.
Say I: "Though broad this ...

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Ode To The West Wind.

1.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

2.
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are s...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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, confusèd 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 h...

Edward Shanks

The Winds

When dark November bade the leaves adieu,
And the gale sung amid the sea-boy's shrouds,
Methought I saw four winged forms, that flew,
With garments streaming light, amid the clouds;
From adverse regions of the sky,
In dim succession, they went by.
The first, as o'er the billowy deep he passed,
Blew from its brazen trump a far-resounding blast.
Upon a beaked promontory high,
With streaming heart, and cloudy brow severe,
Marked ye the father of the frowning year!^[1]
Dark vapours rolled o'er the tempestuous sky,
When creeping WINTER from his cave came forth;
Stern courier of the storm, he cried, what from the north?

    North Wind.

From the vast and desert deeps,
Where the lonely Kraken sleeps,
Where fixed the icy mountains high
G...

William Lisle Bowles

East Wind. (The Winds)

Shouts, and the noise of war!
Far o'er the land hath been my flight,
O'er many a forest dark as night,
O'er champaigns where the Tartar speeds,
O'er Wolga's wild and giant reeds,
O'er the Carpathian summits hoar,
Beneath whose snows and shadows frore,
Poland's level length unfolds
Her trackless woods and wildering wolds,
Like a spirit, seeking rest,
I have passed from east to west,
While sounds of discord and lament
Rose from the earth where'er I went.
I care not; hurrying, as in scorn,
I shook my lance, and blew my horn;
The day shows clear; and merrily
Along the Atlantic now I fly.
Who comes in soft and spicy vest,
From the mild regions of the West?
An azure veil bends waving o'er his head,
And showers of violets from his hands are shed.<...

William Lisle Bowles

Oreithyia

Oreithyia, by the North Wind carried
To stormy Thrace from Athens where you tarried
Down by Ilissus all a blowy day
Among the asphodels, how rapt away
Thither, and in what frozen bed wert married?

"I was a King's tall daughter still unwed,
Slim and desirable my locks to shed
Free from the fillet. He my maiden belt
Undid with busy fingers hid but felt,
And made me wife upon no marriage bed.

"As idly there I lay alone he came
And blew upon my side, and beat a flame
Into my cheeks, and kindled both my eyes.
I suffered him who took no bodily guise:
The light clouds know whether I was to blame.

"Into my mouth he blew an amorous breath;
I panted, but lay still, as quiet as death.
The whispering planes and sighing grasses know
Whether it w...

Maurice Henry Hewlett