Windmill in Norfolk Broads

Wind-Walks is the personal domain of Jonathan Taylor. It takes its name from the second line of a poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins in the 1870s.

an Arts & Crafts stained glass window with the image of a young man carrying a sheaf of corn over his shoulderHurrahing in Harvest
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

As well as providing an address for my own personal emails, the domain provides a handy pinboard for the odd ramblings, photos and gratuitous poetry. However, additions may be irregular and not necessarily coherent: after all, wind-walks are the places the mind goes when looking up at the fluffy white (silk-sack) clouds from a warm grassy bank on a sunny day.

Images: detail from stained glass in Maiden Bradley, Somerset by Edwardian artist, Veronica Whall which features in the current issue of Historic Churches; and top, one of the windmills which once maintained water levels in the Norfolk Broads.