A poem about a house on a windy day

When you start to read wind you get the impression that it is going to be a poem about a house on a windy day. However this is not the case. The author is trying to illustrate how fierce Mother Nature's army can be. He is making it seem as though the wind is fighting the house and it's human inhabitants. The wind is trying to scare the people, by isolating it, from the rest of civilisation, for the night. "The house has been far out to sea all night".

As the wind travels across the countryside it's destructive qualities become apparent, scaring the people almost to death. " The woods crashing through the darkness". The wind is using the surrounding hills to its advantage by making impacting noise that seems to echo across the valley. "The booming hills".

As well as all this the wind continues it terrorising by stamping like a herd of elephants under the windowsills in the flowerbeds.

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"Winds stampeding the fields under the window".

The poet tries to illustrate the winds power and strength by saying that the house had become adrift overnight and the wind had carried it to a new location. "The hills had new places". As the wind moved ad danced in the air it gave off colours that surrounded the little house, making it difficult to see past the garden. "Luminous black and emerald, flexing like the lens of a mad eye."

At midday one of the inhabitants bravely went outside to investigate the extent of the damage, caused by the overnight wind.

As the person looked up in to the wind they had to turn away quickly, because of the shear force acting on their eyes. "Once I looked up through the brunt of the wind that dented the balls of my eyes". The strength of the wind overpowered the hills; they could not endure any more beatings from the wind. They could no longer protect the house from the full force of the wind. "The tent of the hills drummed and strained on its guy rope".

Fearing the return of the wind overnight the whole of the scenery began to change and prepare for the onslaught before them. "The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, at any second to bang and vanish with a flap".

Even the birds cannot understand the force of the wind. "The wind flung a magpie away and a black- back gull bent like an iron bar slowly".

I know that the people are because the poet has written about the house being as fragile as a great green goblet, ringing " in the note that at any second would shatter it ". The people try to shut out the wind by sitting together in the living room and ignoring it. "Now deep in chairs, in front of the great fire". Although they are trying to shut out the wind it is not working because they cannot concentrate on anything except the wind. "We grip our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, or each other". As the wind continues its attack the inhabitants learn to except it and ignore it, if slowly. "We watch the fire blazing, and feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, seeing the window tremble to come in, hearing the stones cry out under the horizons".

The poet does an outstanding job of promoting the winds excellence at its job, to terrorise the inhabitants of the house. He creates the impression by using metaphors, similes and adjectives, that make you feel as though you are really there, experiencing it for yourself. He has constructed the poem well because the sentences run into the next verse. This is effective because it is not used in many other poems. This intrigues the reader into continuing and reading right to the end. The writer uses a lot of hyperbole to exercise his points, such as "the hills drummed and strained on its guy rope".

He has created the impression well and I have enjoyed the poem, although I needed to read it through a few times to fully understand it.