Explore "Storm: at the Farm Window" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The unruly member (for relief / Of aching head) clacks without care; / Pastures lie sullen; hung with grief / The steading: thunder binds the air.
Gulls on the blue sea-surface rock: / The cows move lowing to scant shade; / Jess lays aside the half-worked smock, / Dan, in his ditch, lets fall the spade.
Now swoops the outrageous hurricane / With lightning in steep pitchfork jags; / The blanched hill leaps in sheeted rain, / Sea masses white to assault the crags.
Such menace tottering overhead, / Old Jess for ague scolds no more; / She sees grey bobtail flung down dead / Lightning-blazed by the barn door --
Wonder and panic chase our grief, / Purge our thick distempered blood; / Man, cattle, harvest shock and sheaf, / Stagger below the sluicing flood.