Who Has Seen the Wind?
29 Aug
Who has seen the wind?Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
~ Christina Rossetti
Turns out, we can see the wind, thanks to hint.fm. The U.S. looks like a great, shaggy beastie today, thanks to Isaac. It’s wondrous, but not in a delightful sort of way. More in the awestruck-and-unnerved way.
This is the key to what the lines mean. It looks as if the wind was re-drawing the landscape– shift mountains, changing boundary lines, as though it were no more than rearranging furniture.
The Mad Wind
What hast thou seen, O wind,
Of beauty or of terror,
Surpassing, denied to us,
That with precipitate wings,
Mad and ecstatical,
Thou spurnest the hollows and trees
That offer thee refuge of peace,
And findest within the sky
No safety nor respite
From the memory of thy vision?
Of beauty or of terror,
Surpassing, denied to us,
That with precipitate wings,
Mad and ecstatical,
Thou spurnest the hollows and trees
That offer thee refuge of peace,
And findest within the sky
No safety nor respite
From the memory of thy vision?
~ Clark Ashton Smith
