That high and noble wind is rootless nor
From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on
Childless as fatherless, wild, unconfined,
So that men say, “As homeless as the wind!”
Rising and falling and rising evermore
With years like ticks, aeons as centuries gone;
Only within impalpable ether bound
And blindly with the green globe spinning round. 
He, noble wind,
Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time,
From high to low may fall, and low to high may climb,
Andean peak to deep-caved southern sea,
With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound,
And echoes in his tossing quiver bound
And loosed from height into immensity;
Yet of his freedom tires, remaining free. 
—­Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud,
Uplifting skiey archipelagian isles
Sunnier than ocean’s, blue seas and white isles
Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed;—­
Still of his freedom tiring yet still free,
Homelessly roaming between sky, earth and sea.

But you, O beeches, even as men, have root
Deep in apparent and substantial things—­
Earth, sun, air, water, and the chemic fruit
Wise Time of these has made.  What laughing Springs
Your branches sprinkle young leaf-shadows o’er
That wanting the leaf-shadows were no Springs
Of seasonable sweet and freshness! nor
If Summer of your murmur gathered not
Increase of music as your leaves grow dense,
Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings
Of summer make full Summer, but the hot
Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense. 
Nor Autumn’s waste were dear if your gold snow
Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below;
Nor Winter’s snow were loveliness complete
Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet. 
To hills how many has your tossed green given
Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven;
How many English hills enlarge their pride
Of shape and solitude
By beechwoods darkening the steepest side! 
I know a Mount—­let there my longing brood
Again, as oft my eyes—­a Mount I know
Where beeches stand arrested in the throe
Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low
Against the gods inhabiting the wood. 
Gods into trees did pass and disappear,
Then closing, body and huge members heaved
With energy and agony and fear. 
See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here. 
See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear. 
Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes
Have worn since—­oh, with what desperate surprise! 
These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain
Against alien triumph and the inward pain. 
Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed,
Let the wind glide over you easily again. 
It is a dream you fight, a memory
Of battle lost.  And how should dreaming be
Still a renewed agony? 
But O, when that wind comes up out of the west
New-winged with Autumn from the distant sea
And springs upon you, how should not dreaming be
A remembered and renewing agony? 
Then are your breasts, O unleaved beeches, again
Torn, and your thighs and arms with the old strain
Stretched past endurance; and your groans I hear
Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteer
Driven clashing over; till even dreaming is
Less of a present agony than this.