The North wind blows out of the desolate reaches of Loss, Death and the Past. The City of London is cut off from a past that remembers "the corncrake's cry," though not all of the Past is comforting, as a prayer goes out for all the howling ghosts to "sleep tight down in Hell tonight." A "wind that blows from haunted graves" may recall the misery of the Homeland, but the lonely singer prays that bright angels watch over his child this night. Ireland, ruined by England and London, is haunted by the horrors of invasion, repression and degradation, and the Irish singer must now willingly labor in London as a factory slave to keep his child warm and safe on the other shore of the Sea of Troubles.
The North wind blows out of the desolate reaches of Loss, Death and the Past. The City of London is cut off from a past that remembers "the corncrake's cry," though not all of the Past is comforting, as a prayer goes out for all the howling ghosts to "sleep tight down in Hell tonight." A "wind that blows from haunted graves" may recall the misery of the Homeland, but the lonely singer prays that bright angels watch over his child this night. Ireland, ruined by England and London, is haunted by the horrors of invasion, repression and degradation, and the Irish singer must now willingly labor in London as a factory slave to keep his child warm and safe on the other shore of the Sea of Troubles.