The wind harp or aeolian lyre was a controlling metaphor in many famous Romantic-period works, including, for example, Percy Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The aeolian lyre (named for the Greek god of the winds) symbolized the reciprocal action of mind and nature, productive of harmonious "music" (or poetry, or thought), a concrete image of random, intermittent "inspiration" that stresses the role of the "instrument" as much as the divine (or natural) force of the wind.
The metaphor was itself rendered material in many of the period's fashionable parlors, in wooden and gut-string harps, placed in window casements and played upon by the wind. The effect was as often eerie and dissonant as it was harmonious and melodic.
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