Emily Bronte’s “Night Wind” uses classically romantic imagery to tell of nature’s immense seductive capacities, with the wind’s voice and emotions charming a woman into cosmic union.

True to its title, the wind is central in “Night Wind” (Bronte 1846), and all aspects of the poem’s metaphor flow from it. Opening with the classic love scene of a twilight visit, the poem sets the mood with sky and rose motifs that introduce the speaker’s unannounced caller at the window. Bronte does a great job personifying the wind, the Earth’s very breath, as a courter of flesh and blood, attempting to caress her body as much as her mind: “I sat in silent musing; \ The soft wind waved my hair; \ It told me heaven was glorious,\ And sleeping earth was fair” (lines 5-8).

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