The Wind-Child

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