Windward

“ A merciless young rascal is the Wind. His chief delight
Is to worry ships at sea with savage storms by day and night,
Like a dog-wolf harrying sheep, he chases clouds and scatters showers,
Lays the stately oak-trees low, and snaps the stems of fragile flowers. ”

“ By the spirit of Pan, my pool felt good after the long day's hike!
The wind had changed with the waning afternoon and now blew gently from the southwest, promising a period of fair weather. It gave us, also, the advantage of greater freedom in noises; for, when living in the wild, one comes to realize how potent a carrier, or muffler, of noises is the wind. A fire at night, or smoke by day, may be tempered with human ingenuity, but nature bandies the sound waves with her breath.
I dined in the elegance of simplicity, and Smilax extinguished our small fire of buttonwood. ”

“ Even up in the woods that are still gaunt with winter and silent, save for the ringing strokes of the woodcutters in some distant clearing, the message is borne in the wind that comes out of the west at the dawn of the spring, and is as unlike the wind of autumn as the spirit of the sunrise is unlike the spirit of the sunset. ”

“ The wind was a-surge in these clouds and they visibly careened, and collapsed, and filled out anew as if they were sails spread to the fury of a gale, but no token of motion was in the densely wooded mountains beneath them, and only a gentle breeze ruffled the tree tops of the valleys, a silver wake following its invisible passage. ”

“ True inspiration seems certainly born of this marriage of wind and fire. How singular⁠—have you ever thought? would be the impressions of a man to whom the motion of air, as wind, was unknown, when first he witnessed the phenomenon of a twenty-knot breeze. Imagine a people that knew not wind⁠—how they would tremble to see the treetops bend; to hear the roar, the whispers, the sweet singing of all Nature about them for the first time; to know the sounds and movements of the myriad objects that but for wind would be silent and motionless from one year’s end to another! ”

“ The Wind and the Trees I am sitting under tall trees, with a great wind boiling like surf about the tops of them, so that their living load of leaves rocks and roars in something that is at once exultation and agony. I feel, in fact, as if I were actually sitting at the bottom of the sea among mere anchors and ropes, while over my head and over the green twilight of water sounded the everlasting rush of waves and the toil and crash and shipwreck of tremendous ships. The wind tugs at the trees as if it might pluck them root and all out of the earth like tufts of grass. ”

“ The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modern poetry,—at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air. ”

“ You have no doubt, already guessed what had happened. The facts were simply these: In the night, the cold had increased, and several of the Wind Eaters, half asleep, and half stupefied by the deep draughts of the boisterous north-west wind, had approached closer and closer to the fire, when suddenly the vast quantity of cold air which they had swallowed began to expand and four of them exploded with a terrific noise.
In quicker time than it takes to tell it, my dwelling was surrounded by a screaming, shrieking, howling mob of Wind Eaters, demanding my instant death. ”

“ The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man. ”

“ In the first, "The Windmill," which is illustrated, the motion of the wind and of the world it blows is dazzling. The field of, golden grain, bright in the glow of the sun that has just broken through the rain clouds, is quivering with graceful undulations. ”

“ Yet to feel the sting of a north-easterly wind on one's cheek, and the sensation of crunching snow beneath one's feet, with a bright blue sky overhead and the far-away smell of spring in one's nostrils, was to experience something of the joy of life. ”

“ The famous chapter was all but begun now, and would have been quite begun, but for the wind. It was blowing stiffly from the east, and it rumbled in the chimney and shook the house. That was not much; but, looking out into the wind's grey eye for inspiration, I laid down my pen again to make the remark to myself, how emphatically everything by the sea declares that it has a great concern in the state of the wind. The trees blown all one way; the defences of the harbour reared highest and strongest against the raging point; the shingle flung up on the beach from the same direction ”

“ Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I am flying, and sometimes, like to-day, it seems as though the one thing in the whole confounded world is the confounded wind that roars in your ears and makes your eyes water and sneaks down your collar to chill your spine and goes scooting up your sleeves, unless you have gauntlets, and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the noisiest old cast-iron tin-can Vrenskoy motor. ”

“ The wind troubled us most, for here there is no happy medium between a dead calm and a tearing gale, and the latter occurred on an average every second day. Northerly and north-westerly winds prevailed, and we whistled in vain for a southerly buster to clear the coast of ice. And yet notwithstanding our many miseries there were pleasant days, still and sunlit, when I would stroll to the summit of a grassy hill near the settlement, where the sward was carpeted with wild flowers and where the soothing tinkle of many rivulets formed by melting snow were conducive to lazy reverie. ”

“ ABOUT WALDEMAR DAA AND HIS DAUGHTERS
WHEN the wind sweeps across a field of grass it makes little ripples in it like a lake; in a field of corn it makes great waves like the sea itself: this is the wind's frolic. Then listen to the stories it tells; it sings them aloud, one kind of song among the trees of the forest, and a very different one when it is pent up within walls with all their cracks and crannies. Do you see how the wind chases the white fleecy clouds as if they were a flock of sheep? Do you hear the wind down there, howling in the open doorway like a watchman winding his horn? ”

“ So the hot winds, of which I have been speaking, are not felt in the degree we should be led to suppose. Like the air the spirits are buoyant and light, and it is for its disagreeableness at the time, not any after effects that a hot wind is to be dreaded. ”

“ The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends
Its grief in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,
Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield
As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind.
The last light is dimming; night comes on behind. ”

“ The wind blows bleak across the prairies and the brittle snow-flakes that beat on the glass outside the iron-bars have a sound like the whirr of swords. I wish the wind would blow always, for it lays a salve on my soul. ”

“ But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. ”

“ The Wind That Tramps the World
The little City of the Big Winds lies on the very roof of the world, among the bleak, barren storm-blown peaks of the Himalayas, as though flung there by some monstrous frenzied hand, or snapped from the tip of a whip in the hand of a giant. A grayer or more desolate spot would be hard to imagine, or a spot where the tumult of discord is more frightful. ”

“ A tiny wind from the north, keen as a knife blade, blew in my face as I stood there, out of the calm blue sky, and seemed to whisper to me of the terrifying nights of storm, of the deadly wind before which all life goes down like a straw, that raged here in the winter. ”

“ That is why it is called the sovereign’s wind.”
“The effect of this wind upon those who are in it, is to make them look sad, and chilled, even to sobbing. Pure and fresh, it cures disease and sobers the drunk; it sharpens one’s sight and hearing; it gives repose to the body and comfort to the man; and thus it is called the virile wind of the sovereign.”
“Well put, indeed,” said the king. “Now can you tell me about the wind of the people.” “The wind of the people,” replied Sung Yü, “rises with a gust in the slums. It sweeps up clouds of dust from holes ”

“ When the wind continues to blow from the same quarter while the delinquent travels thirty, or six and thirty miles, if he be of a good constitution, he certainly survives. But what proves the most destructive is, that there is no dependence on the wind in that part of the world for any length of time.—There are no regular land-winds; and the sea-wind is not perceived there at all, the situation of the tree being at too great a distance, and surrounded by high mountains and uncultivated forests. ”

“ One day West Wind blew the tops of the trees.
He blew the corn in the fields.
He blew the apples off the trees.
Just then the bright sun came out.
“I am stronger than you,” said West Wind.
“No! I am stronger than you,” said the sun.
Then West Wind said, “Do you see that man?
He has on a warm coat.
I can make the man take it off.”
“Can you?” said the sun.
West Wind blew, and blew, and blew. ”

“ So now I go here and there to look for the Wind, and know not where to find it."
"Follow me," said the old woman: "I am the mother of the Winds, and have four sons; the first son is the East Wind, the second is the South Wind, the third is the West Wind, and the fourth the North Wind. ”

“ However, one would think, that if he was determined to compare Wind to an Idea or Sensation in the human Mind, he might have thought of one more swift in it's Motions. For though the East Wind is a heavy Wind, and lays very keen Hold of a Sail, as being cold, and therefore more condensed, and moving with greater Moment, on Account of it's Weight ”

“ To walk in a windstorm and feel it beating upon you is a sensation of the body no more definite and unmistakable than this windstorm of the spirit, which has come to me perhaps a hundred times in my life. ”

“ Through four of these come winds of blessing and prosperity, and from those eight come hurtful winds: when they are sent, they bring destruction on all the earth and on the water upon it, and on all who dwell thereon, and on everything which is in the water and on the land.
5. And the first wind from those portals, called the east wind, comes forth through the first portal which is in the east, inclining towards the south: from it come forth desolation, drought, heat, and destruction. ”

“ A wild gust of wind shrieks angrily above board as the smack rises and plunges in the trough of a choppy sea. The blood-red sun has vanished, an inky darkness has set in, and the wind is rapidly increasing from a fresh breeze into a regular fierce and nasty gale. ”

“ The power and awfulness of the wind are not to be recognised by a glance at the weather-vane or at the thistle-down floating through the air; it is the cumulative effect of a hundred different details, a hundred different things touched and changed by the wind, that makes the wind seem beyond escape; it is the suggestion of the broad spaces and unlimited stretches through which the wind can range, that must give the impression that it is everywhere ”

“ And with the changing angle of the myriad yellow heads the colour also changes, till gradually there swims upon the mind the impression of some huge and shadowy image that flies above the field⁠—some personal deity of wind, some djin of air. One almost sees the spirit of the wind.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ But Wintry Wind is the most exasperating and prying of nature’s messengers, whose mission is the uncovering of weaknesses in all things animate and inanimate. It soon discovers if your eyes are sensitive, your hat a size too small, that you are subject to rheumatism, that your breath is short when you walk uphill, and that your knees bend as you go down, and so turns your cloak over your head like an extinguisher. ”

“ I remember the sparkling wind on a bright autumn morning,
I let down my hair and danced in the golden gale,
Then chased the wind as the wind chased fallen leaves—
Wind cannot be caught and tamed like a bird.
I touch joy and it crumbles to dust in my fingers. ”

“ But for less gifted mortals there are certain effects of wind that seem to me to approach uncommonly close to actual sight, or at least to a point where one may imagine what wind ought to look like. Watch the gusts of a northwest wind as they fall in rapid succession upon a standing field of high barley, beating the surface into long curved shadows that bring to mind Shelley’s “kindling within the strings of the waved air, Æolian modulations.” ”

“ At our feet the wind, which must have come in through some passage from the open air, tore and shrieked, while across the way, not more than twelve yards distant, fell the waters of a magnificent cataract. ”

“ For when the nights are long and the days are short, and the sunlight is feeble as a sick man's smile, the North Wind wakes from his summer sleep and calls to his brother the East Wind, and they go forth over the earth driving the heavy-laden snow-clouds before them, and the pale snow-fairies who do their will. ”