The Thing

Strong gales, sometimes severe, rain flooding out of the sky. A wild day, and a wilder night. It reminded me of Chesteron's "The Thing", where he comments, in the course of a comment on self-government:

The wind awoke last night with so noble a violence that it was like the
war in heaven; and I thought for a moment that the Thing had broken free.
For wind never seems like empty air. Wind always sounds full and
physical, like the big body of something; and I fancied that the Thing
itself was walking gigantic along the great roads between the forests of
beech.

The wind sang and split the sky like thunder all the night through; in
scraps of sleep it filled my dreams with the divine discordances of
martyrdom and revolt; I heard the horn of Roland and the drums of Napoleon
and all the tongues of terror with which the Thing has gone forth: the
spirit of our race alive. But when I came down in the morning only a
branch or two was broken off the tree in my garden; and none of the great
country houses in the neighbourhood were blown down, as would have
happened if the Thing had really been abroad.

I can imagine "The Thing", large, gigantic, uprooting trees, roots, houses, breaking down
the walls.