Wind by Ted Hughes was published in his first collection of 40 poems the hawk in the rain in 1957 in it the speaker describes a storm which starts during the night and goes on into the following day the wind attacks the natural landscape with an overwhelming ferocity that seems to threaten the very foundations of the Earth even the safety of the speaker and his we assume partner were Sheltering inside their isolated Cottage seems to be at risk trapped in a state of inertia the pair are transfixed by the elemental force of the Gale that continues to rage outside to the extent that they are unable to concentrate on anything else not even each other the poem explores the theme of the power of nature and how this as a consequence diminishes the power of man the collection from which this poem is taken was published in the year following hughes's marriage after a whirlwind romance to the American poet Sylvia Plath the pair separated in 1962 after Hughes was found to have had an affair and Plath tragically went on to commit suicide the following year it's been suggested suggested that the turbulent weather in the poem may be a metaphor for the volatile and stormy relationship that the couple had from the very beginning of their time together the poem comprises six quatrains or stands as of four lines each there is no fixed metrical or rhythmic structure although Hughes does employ techniques such as enjambment both within and across stanzas and czora to modulate the Rhythm there's no regular rhyme scheme as such to which Hugh strictly adheres although stanas one 2 four and five do follow an a b b a pattern while stanas 3 and six follow an alternating a b a b pattern this is very subtle and is easily overlooked as Hughes chooses only to exploit masculine or single rhyme which is where the repetition of sounds falls on the final stressed syllable of the line and is what we tend to exclusively Define as rhyme on one occasion EG sky and I in stanza 2 he instead makes use of other rhyming techniques such as half or slant rhyme which is the opposite of a literation whether is consonants or a repetition of final consonant sounds EG night and wet and as and eyes asant CG flap and black and forced or oblique rhyme such as blazing and in Hughes also employs sound pattering throughout the poem as well as at the ends of lines such as the literation IG wind wielded consonant C brunt dented and tent and asant C arride and blinding there's a significant number of words that have alliterated frickative F and plosive but sounds igy fields and fine and booming and bang as well as a subgroup of words with FL and bl sounds such as floundering flexing flap and flung and black which appears three times blinding blade and blazing the cumulative effect of these forceful sounds is to build up a sense of the overwhelming power of the wind which also serves to enhance the group of words that form a semantic field of sound some of which are also on a mapic i crashing booming stampeding drummed strained bang flap rang shatter and cry out the poem has a firstperson narrator which suggests that its subject matter may have an autobiographical inspiration is also structured chronologically in that there is a logical progression from night through the following morning and midday the events of which are recounted in the past tense as far as afternoon or evening the events of which are recounted in the present tense to indicate that the storm is still raging on and the couple remain trapped in a state of limbo there's extensive figurative language such as simile and metaphor as well as its subtypes zoomorphism and personification which Hughes employs to characterize the wind variously as a herd of stampeding creatures and a knife wielding Maniac who out of control marauds across the landscape threatening both natural and man-made structures as well as human relationships Hughes chooses a significant number of present participles such as crashing booming stampeding floundering blinding flexing quivering seeing and hearing to suggest the seemingly incessant nature of the storm the simple onew title wind belies the complexity and drama of the poem that will unfold and indicates the way this natural yet terrifying phenomenon is going to dominate the entire work the poem's opening metaphor this house has been far out at Sea all night immediately evokes a sense of isolation and vulnerability with the idea that the house is like a ship stranded in a storm far away from land at the mercy of the wind and the waves Hughes continues to build up a picture of Devastation with the auditory imagery of the woods crashing through Darkness suggesting the noise and force of mountainous waves as the trees are uprooted as they are blown against one another and the booming Hills as the sounds reverberate Across The Valleys the way the winds are stampeding feing the fields under the window evokes how crops and other vegetation are blown flat by the gusts that sweep chaotically across them Hugh is use the present participle stampeding is zoomorphic and suggests that they are dangerously out of control like a herd of spooked horses the fact that this is all happening right under the window also gives an indication of the speaker's own proximity to the events outside and introduces a note of tension the final line of the stanza seems somewhat obscure on first reading floundering black as stride and blinding wet the present participle floundering means stumbling or staggering usually in mud or water and suggests the clumsy unruliness of the night the adjective a stride meaning with a leg on each side of something seems to relate back to the illusion on the previous line of the Winds as a herd of out ofcontrol horses perhaps to imply how they also bring riding along On them a chaotic black or darkness and the blinding wet of torrential rain the disconcerting and impressionistic nature of this line helps to evoke the chaos and the confusion of the storm note the enjambment here across the stanza break till day Rose to suggest the Persistence of the storm throughout the night the czora created by the semicolon forces the reader to pause although this does not indicate an end to the storm instead it seems to Herald a changed world that greets the speaker in the sunrise as the force of the battering wind appears to have altered the landscape overnight then under an orange Sky the hills had new places es the wind now has a new weapon at its disposal and wind wielded blade light suggesting that the wind is a homicidal knife wielding Maniac hellbent on destroying anything in its path further enhanced by the reference to a Mad Eye at the end of the stanza the quality of the light is sharp and harsh as the wind uses it to cut through the landscape distorting the speaker perception as the black and emerald or darkness and bright green of the woods and Fields appear warped and contorted flexing like the lens of a Mad Eye note the complex sound patterning here with the alliterated of wind wielded the consonants of the liquid implosive but and dirt sounds in wielded blade light luminous black and emerald which enhance the sense of the wind effortlessly slicing through everything with which it comes into contact note how we only now have our first full stop after two complete stanzas suggesting the Unstoppable and uncontrollable force of the wind the third stanza continues at noon I scaled along the house side as far as the coal house door the speaker has been forced out of the house to braid the elements in order to fetch coal for the fire the verb scaled has connotations of climbing and suggests how the wind flattens him against the wall of the house along which he has to Edge as though he is high up on a steep mountain side note the relative shortness of this sentence here the jux to position of which against the much longer sentence describing the progression of the storm suggesting the weakness of humankind in the face of Nature and the limits that it has put on his freedom to go where he chooses once I looked up an even shorter Clause here punctuated with a dash evokes the brevity of his glance the force of the wind sufficiently strong to Dent the balls of my eyes before he is compelled to look away note Hugh's use of the noun brunt here as an adjective which means the full force or impact of something and is usually used in the phrasal verb to Bear the brunt of to suggest its physical energy and power through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes the tent of the hills drummed and strained its gy rope not the consonant of the nasal n followed by aive t or d here to enhance the wind sense of force the metaphor tent of the hills not only evokes their visual form but also suggests that they are flimsy and fragile made of nothing but fabric with little to Anchor them but a line that under tension tethers them to the ground in the same way that a tent in very windy conditions drums or reverberates and strains its gy rope a landscape that once was immovable and enduring now seems vulnerable and fragile not only do the hills appear at risk of being Swept Away by the Gale without warning but the fields are quivering as though trembling with fear the normally undulating Skyline is now a Grimace an ugly and twisted facial expression that communicates pain which may at any second bang and vanish with a flap like a tent which no longer has anything to keep it anchored to the Earth the wind appears unstoppably SED IC as it violently flung a magpie away and a black back Gull bent like an iron bar slowly note the way in which the alliteration of the py but and the consonant sounds are difficult to enunciate quickly evoking the slow and deliberate manner in which the wind seems to take pleasure from demonstrating its strength Hughes continues the house rang like some fine green Green Goblet in the note that any second would shatter it note the enjambment across the stanza break which leaves the house teetering on the edge of a metaphorical Abyss possibly moments away from destruction the fragility of this man-made structure is made all the more Vivid by hughes's simile which Likens it to a delicate piece of antique glass a fine Green Goblet another man-made object which is ringing vibrating at a frequency dangerously close to that at which it will shatter or explode the speaker switches abruptly to himself and his partner who now deep in chairs in front of the great fire grip our hearts the pair are hunkering down to wait out the storm as though their armchairs in front of the great fire will provide them with physical protection in some way the way they grip their hearts suggests that they metaphorically holding on to their courage for dear life this is all they can focus on as they cannot entertain book thought or each other note how once again Hughes uses form to reflect meaning as the enjambment across the stanza break isolates the phrase or each other from the rest of its sentence and suggests tension and an emotional Gulf between the pair all they can do is watch the fire blazing as they feel the roots of the house move the metaphor roots to describe the foundations of the house reminds the reader of the woods crashing through darkness of the first stanza and evokes the vulnerability that the speaker feels as though this man-made structure of bricks and mortar is as fragile as a tree that can be uprooted in a gale the perm leaves the couple in limbo as they sit on seeing the window tremble to come in hearing the stones cry C out under the Horizon the verbs tremble to describe the window and cry out to personify the stones or building blocks of the cottage seem to have been transferred from The house's occupants to effectively communicate Their Fear as they wait for the storm each in their own private hell to subside thanks for watching if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section below and I'll do my best to answer them don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos on English language topics and exam techniques and English literature texts