Classic Poem

Once more the wind leaps from the sullen land
With his old battle-cry.
A tree bends darkly where the wall looms high;
Its tortured branches, like a grisly hand,
Clutch at the sky.

Gray towers rise from the gloom and underneath —
Black-barred and strong —
The snarling windows guard their ancient wrong;
But the mad wind shakes them, hissing through his teeth
A battle song.

O bitter is the challenge that he flings
At bars and bolts and keys,
Torn with the cries of vanished centuries
And curses hurled at long-forgotten kings
Beyond dim seas.

The wind alone, of all the gods of old,
Men could not chain.
O wild wind, brother to my wrath and pain,
Like you, within a restless heart, I hold
A hurricane.

The wind has known the dungeons of the past,
Knows all that are;
And in due time will strew the dust afar,
And, singing, he will shout their doom at last
To a laughing star.

O cleansing warrior wind, stronger than death,
Wiser than he may know;
O smite these stubborn walls and lay them low,
Uproot and rend them with your mighty breath —
Blow, wind, blow, blow!