THE WINDS OF GOD
by: Karle Wilson Baker
(1878-1960)
- he wind is blowing across the world; it is lifting my brother's hair
- Freshly from off his forehead, and bringing the light to his eyes;
- Listen, and you may hear it come, stirring the empty air:
- Oh, lift your faces, folk of the world, and feel the wind arise!
- Feel it? Ay, you may see it far, in the tops of the gusty trees
- Where the beam of a day that is passing borrows a poignant grace;
- And some are scattered before the gale, like a leaf that flutters and flees--
- But we that have waited long stand up and take it full in the face!
- It comes, and we know not whither; it hastens we know not where;
- And boisterous is its coming, the swoop of its healing wings;
- Yet dainty as breath of clover-fields it washes in waves of air
- O'er a wistful world that had half forgot to dream of its visitings.
- No blame to our patient fathers, they born to the moment of calm;
- The great winds blow not alway; the storm itself must rest;
- They shunned not the wounds of the weary fight, though their wise men knew no balm:
- Though the air was stale and empty, they breathed it and did their best.
- But ours was the happy cradle, the trough of the rising wave;
- Up to its crested summit shall our lives perforce be flung.
- In the great world's battle-ages, even the cowards are brave;
- The winds of God are blowing, and we--ah,l we are young!
"The Winds of God" is reprinted from Blue Smoke. Karle Wilson Baker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY KARLE WILSON BAKER |
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