The 'Autumn Vision' is an ode to the south-west wind, which has so often filled the sails of the English warships:
'Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow,
Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior day,
South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge her foe,
Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way,
Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky,
Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms the shore.'
Charles Kingsley, like a hardy Norseman, preferred the north-east gale. To him the south-west wind is
'The ladies' breeze,
Bringing back their lovers
Out of all the seas,'
while Mr. Swinburne hears in the rushing south-western gale
'the sound of wings gigantic,
Wings whose measure is the measure of the measureless Atlantic,'
and, after the storm,
'The grim sea swell, grey, sleepless and sad as a soul estranged.'
'A Swimmer's Dream' gives us the poetry of floating on the slow roll of the waves, some cloudy November morning.