Wind Summary

A house is battered by wind all night—so isolated in the middle of the tumult that it seems like it's out at sea. The surrounding landscape and woods also suffer the wind's onslaught. In the morning, the wind has (metaphorically) re-arranged the hills, and wields the light with the motions of a madly swiveling eye.

At this point, two verses in, the poem's speaker, referred to only in the first person, appears in the poem. As he edges along the side of the house, he looks into the wind, feeling it dent his eyeballs. It seems to make the whole landscape quiver and shiver, threatening to suddenly make it vanish with a flap. It knocks some birds around, too.

The house rings in the wind, like a goblet ready to shatter from the noise. The speaker and the other people (or person) in the house are unable to concentrate on reading, thinking, or talking to each other, as the feeling of the wind is so overwhelming. It seems like it's moving the roots of the house, and causing even the stones to "cry out under the horizon."