MY FOLK’S the wind-folk, it’s there I belong, <br />I tread the earth below them, and the earth does me wrong, <br />Before my spirit knew itself, before this frame unfurled, <br />I was a little wandering breeze and blew about the world. <br />The winds of the morning that breathe against my cheek <br />Are kisses of comfort from a love too great to speak; <br />The whimpering airs that cry by night and never find their rest <br />Are sobbing to be taken in and soothed upon my breast. <br />The storm through the mountains, the tempest from the sea, <br />That ride their cloudy horses and take no thought of me, <br />They are my noble brothers that hasten to the fight, <br />They fill my heart with singing, they fill my eyes with light, <br />They’re a shield upon my shoulder, a sword by my side, <br />A battle cry for weariness,—and a plume of pride. <br />But sometimes in the moonlight, when the moon is in the west, <br />Young and strange and virginal and dropping to her rest, <br />There comes a wind from out the south, a little chill and thin, <br />And draws me from the human warmth that houses it within. <br />My soul streams forth to follow a soul that lures it on, <br />The sleepy flesh calls kin to it, and murmurs to be gone; <br />Across the dreaming dewy flowers and through the shadowy trees <br />The sweet insistent whisper comes, and I am ill at ease. <br />How, they have not told me, and where, I do not know, <br />But the wind-folk is my folk, and some day I’ll go.<br /><br />Enid Derham<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wind-child/
