WIND
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills * onomatopoeia
Winds stampeding the fields under the window *personification/
Floundering black astride and blinding wet pathetic fallacy
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded * alliteration
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. * simile
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, *metaphor
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, * metaphor
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house * simile
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. 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.
By Ted Hughes
The poem opens with the chilling metaphor “This house has been far out
at sea all night”, comparing the house to a boat lost at sea. The poem is
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills * onomatopoeia
Winds stampeding the fields under the window *personification/
Floundering black astride and blinding wet pathetic fallacy
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded * alliteration
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. * simile
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, *metaphor
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, * metaphor
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house * simile
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. 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.
By Ted Hughes
The poem opens with the chilling metaphor “This house has been far out
at sea all night”, comparing the house to a boat lost at sea. The poem is
