The first line of stanza one opens much like a nursery rhyme, echoing the title of the poem as a question— “Who has seen the wind?”—to which Rossetti’s speaker provides an answer immediately in line 2: “neither I nor you.” However, the speaker and her companion know that the wind is present because of how the trees move, bowing down with their leaves “trembling.”
By stanza two, the poem's didactic tone comes into focus, as the speaker seems to be teaching that invisible phenomena can be witnessed indirectly through the effects they might have on the world. The wind cannot be seen, but it certainly blows the trees; so, without seeing the wind itself, we see evidence of it through its effect. For Rossetti, this lesson also works as a reaffirmation of faith in a divine being: a being who, although unseen, still affects the world in which we live.
