The wind has just been out of hand these last couple of days. When you go outside, it’s like a bully pushing you down. At night, it howls and shakes the house, and even after living in that house for 20 years, I’m afraid we’ll end up in Kansas. Or Oz. My husband has used the snowblower on the driveway four times in the last three days, and our vehicles have been stuck in the driveway at least twice. Once a car wouldn’t start due to battery issues.
But southern Wyoming has the highest sustained winds in the continental United States.
That’s why we have such a burgeoning industry of wind farms.
It’s due the
venturi effect, where the mountains squeeze toward each other like a garden hose and shoot the air through.
But this morning is calm and sunny and people are out shoveling their walks. A wonderful calm after the storm. So in honor of our frequent visitor, here’s Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind."
Ode to the West Wind
I
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 wingèd 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, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own? The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
1 comment:
Too bad that lull didn't last all day!
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