Wind

“Wind” is a free verse poem comprised of six quatrains: four-lined stanzas. While it is very close to blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—the meter and syllable count does not strictly follow this form. The poem’s structure does so closely enough, however, that some consider the poem to be blank verse.

The speaker is unnamed and one of two human characters present in the poem; the second, the speaker’s partner, does not appear until the penultimate stanza. The poem begins with a metaphor of the speaker’s house “far out at sea” (Line 1) during the night, in a storm so violent even the woods were “crashing” (Line 2) and the hills were “booming” (Line 2). The fields were “floundering” (Line 4) under the “stampeding” wind (Line 3). The “blinding” rain (Line 4) obscured the landscape. The mood is full of dread. Each image suggests a struggle—particularly in Hughes's choice of warlike diction. The storm continues all night “Till day rose” (Line 5), and in the second stanza, the mood begins to shift to a more hopeful one, with the “orange sky” (Line 5) of dawn.

This new optimism does not endure. As the sunrise illuminates the landscape, the speaker notices that the wind has appeared to cleave the hills into new grooves, altering the very topography of the land. It “wielded” (Line 6) ominous “Black and emerald” (Line 7) like a knife, bending and shifting the way a “mad eye” (Line 8) might. The eye here represents both the speaker’s literal eye and the eye of the storm, which marks a period of relative calm before the violence begins anew in the third stanza when the speaker ventures outside at midday. The first two stanzas are a single continuous sentence, and the effect presents the scene amid oppressive, powerful weather.

At noon, the speaker goes outside to the shed where he and his partner keep the coal to build fires. The wind has picked back up and so fiercely blows that the speaker must “scale along” (Line 9) the side of the house, hunched over. Upon raising his head to look up, the speaker’s eyes are “dented” (Line 11) by the velocity of its force. The pause at the end of this line causes the reader to also pause and wonder at what the speaker gazes. The hills are compared to “tents” (Line 12)—a flimsy shelter at the mercy of the elements—which appear to “drum” and “strain” (Line 12) at the tethering “guyrope” (Line 12). The tone grows more foreboding in the sense that the hills are losing strength in the struggle to remain attached to the land at all; they may “bang and vanish with a flap” (Line 14) at any moment. The brutality of the personified wind is in full force.

As the speaker continues to look in fear and wonder at the damage the wind is causing, the landscape also becomes fearful. The fields are “quivering” (Line 13) and the skyline wears a “grimace” (Line 13). The wind displays its might by tossing aside a magpie and twisting a gull “like an iron bar” (Line 16). The house musically vibrates like a “fine green goblet” (Line 17), but the note is discordant—high-pitched and shrieking as if it may “shatter” (Line 18). Unlike the first half of the poem, the lines in the second half contain shorter sentences—a construction that speeds the action along with the wind and the storm, and allows the poet to show how many things are affected by the weather both in the natural and domestic worlds.

By the middle of the fifth stanza, the speaker has retreated to the house, built a “great fire” (Line 19), and settled into a chair next to a partner. But the anticipation of the relative safety and calm of the interior is quickly dashed. The couple is terrified. They “grip” (Line 19) at their hearts and cannot be distracted from the wind’s violence by any activity, whether reading, thinking, or simply enjoying each other’s company and comfort.

The couple sits in silence in the final stanza and “watch[es] the fire blazing” (Line 21). As they sit, they feel the house so pummeled by the wind that their window “trembles” (Line 23) as if it might crash in on them. The foundation, which is compared to “roots” (Line 22), moves beneath them. The shifting and transformation of the natural landscape outside under the violent power of the wind has now come into the house. The couple is paralyzed, able only to sit and listen to the stones “cry out” (Line 24) from their various locations in the terrain.