The Gothic style, said Cram, "is the trumpet blast of an awakening world, a proclamation to the four winds of heaven that man has found himself".
"[W]hether by the winds of Heaven, or by the blessing of Heaven on Southern valor, we trust soon to be able to announce that the fleet which sailed from Hampton Roads … shall never more return, unless, indeed, under another flag".
Perhaps the Bible might beat it in numbers, but in proportion of lines used, Hamlet must win – from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest to Monica Dickens' The Winds of Heaven to John Masefield's Bird of Dawning.
Which, furthermore, left him swinging in a rather grave and hazardous position, influenced not just by the fair and graceful winds of heaven, but by a forked-tongued, red-hoofed, south-to-north blown breeze.
The class poet at Ohio University, class of '91, Strauss also wrote an ode to mark the occasion: As harps for the winds of heaven, My web-like cables are spun; I offer my span for the traffic of man, At the gate of the setting sun.
When the City of Carlisle opened a new power station in 1927, it even invoked Emile Zola in the foreword to a fancy commemorative brochure: "The time must come when electricity will be for everyone, like the waters of the earth and the winds of heaven.
