WIND IN POETRY 29 



well for him for ever. But, I venture to add, it would 

 not be so well for the seamew. 



The wind has not been so fortunate. One can't 

 remember all the poetry one has read in a lifetime; 

 one remembers only that the poet's wind is of two 

 sorts, like two distinct entities. One is the warm and 

 soft caressing wind that breathes among the flowers, 

 stealing and giving odours, the spring wind ever 

 associated with love's young dream; the other is 

 the loud, the boisterous or blustering wind, " the 

 wind Euroclydon, the storm-wind," the wind that 

 howls like a hungry wolf about the house, or moans 

 " in its strange penance," as one has it; the wind 

 that is eerie and weird and uncanny, and is associated 

 with the poet's darkest moods, the desolation of his 

 soul, and distinctly encourages his suicidal impulses. 

 It all seems like a convention which after many 

 centuries has ceased to be one. I dare say there are 

 many exceptions, but I can't recall them just now, 

 excepting Shelley's wonderful ode. 



And one other, and this only because it was written 

 yesterday — the most soul-stirring hymn to the wind 

 and the elemental forces of Nature I am acquainted 

 with, the forces against which man has striven from 

 the unremembered, the incalculable past even to the 

 present day and these last four years of bloody 

 strife. It is entitled Barbarry Camp, and was written 

 in the year before the war by Captain C. H. Sorley, 

 one of our young poets who have given their lives 

 for England and France. I must quote more than a 

 stanza or two. It is supposed to be spoken by the 



