Sorley’s Weather

By Robert Graves

When outside the icy rain  

 Comes leaping helter-skelter,  

Shall I tie my restive brain  

 Snugly under shelter?  

 

Shall I make a gentle song

 Here in my firelit study,  

When outside the winds blow strong  

 And the lanes are muddy?  

 

With old wine and drowsy meats  

 Am I to fill my belly?

Shall I glutton here with Keats?  

 Shall I drink with Shelley?  

 

Tobacco’s pleasant, firelight’s good:  

 Poetry makes both better.  

Clay is wet and so is mud,  

 Winter rains are wetter.  

 

Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,  

 For though the winds come frorely,  

I’m away to the rain-blown hill  

 And the ghost of Sorley.