Upon all our islands this south-west wind is the sea wind. But elsewhere
there are sea winds that are not from the south-west. They, too, none
the less, are conquerors. They, too, are always strong, compelling winds
that take possession of the light, the shadow, the sun, moon, and stars,
and constrain them all alike to feel the sea. Not a field, not a
hillside, on a sea-wind day, but shines with some soft sea-lights. The
moon's little boat tosses on a sea-wind night.

The south-west wind takes the high Italian coasts. He gathers the ilex
woods together and throngs them close, as a sheep-dog gathers the sheep.
They crowd for shelter, and a great wall, leaning inland also, with its
strong base to the sea, receives them. It is blank and sunny, and the
trees within are sunny and dark, serried, and their tops swept and
flattened by months of sea-storms. On the farther side there are
gardens--gardens that have in their midst those quietest things in all
the world and most windless, box-hedges and ponds. The gardens take
shelter behind the scared and hurried ilex woods, and the sea-wind spares
them and breaks upon the mountain. But the garden also is his, and his
wild warm days have filled it with orange-trees and roses, and have given
all the abundant charm to its gay neglect, to its grass-grown terraces,
and to all its lapsed, forsaken, and forgotten dainties.

Nothing of the nature in this seaward Italy would be so beautiful without
the touch of man and of the sea gales.

When the south-west wind brings his rain he brings it with the majestic
onset announced by his breath. And when the light follows, it comes from
his own doorway in the verge. His are the opened evenings after a day
shut down with cloud. He fills the air with innumerable particles of