HIGH WINDS 



must be tidied up. They stir the waters, blowing 

 oxygen into stagnant lagoons, turning over the 

 tepid ponds, and shouting to the lazy runlets, if 

 we can believe Lanier, 



Run home, little streams. 

 With your laps full of stars 

 And of dreams.&quot; 



They are clarion winds, and they start the 

 trumpets in you, if you have any. But they are 

 not only frolicsome, trumpeting, housecleaning 

 they are supervising, regulating, policing, sanitary 

 winds. They go through the woods with mighty 

 scalpels. They tap on the oak to hear if the heart 

 is sound. They cut away his dead branches ruth 

 lessly, and bring down the bare pinnacle on the 

 elm with a crash ; they hate dry superfluities ; 

 they try every trunk and inquire about its roots ; 

 they skylark like Goths with the young poplars 

 and birches, and if they find one careless and 

 giddy, with little underpinning, ah me, they 

 stretch her lengthwise sprawling and go galavant- 

 ing off for others. 



I wonder if some of those earlier confreres of 

 mine who were wont to sit about the Parisian 

 Parnassus in lofty garrets, and who wrote starry 

 poems about Nature in the late and reeking hours 

 amid clouds of tobacco smoke, and with black 

 coffee for the muse or perhaps it was absinthe 

 I wonder if the November winds would not 

 blow the celestial fire out of them on top of that 



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