When your fingers touch the keys Hark, soft sounds of summer seas In a melody most fair Whisper through the pleasant air, Or a winding mountain stream Glitters to the pale moonbeam, Or a breeze doth stir the tops Of springtime larches in a copse, Or the winds are loosed and hurled About the wonder-stricken world With immortal harmonies, When your fingers touch the keys. A Fragment ―――― _And_ some came down in a great wind Under grey scurrying skies To where the long wave-beaten shore For ever shrieks and cries. O, fling aside your toil, your care, When one cries of the sea, And the great waves that foam and toss, And the white clouds that flee: Let us forget our weariness, Forget that we have sinned, So we but sail, what matters it If Death ride on the wind? Storm from the sky, storm from the sea Beat on them as they stood, And a great longing sprang in them To cross the roaring flood. . . . Sea Poppies _’Twixt_ lonely lands and desert beach, Where no wind blows and no waves reach, A sunken precinct here we keep, With woven wiles of endless sleep; Our twisted stems of sere-hued green, Our pallid blooms what sun has seen? And he that tastes our magic breath Shall sleep that sleep whose name is death. Wild clouds are scurrying overhead, The wild wind’s voice is loud and dread, Sounding the knell of the dying day, Yet here is silence and gloom alway. And a great longing seizes me To burst my bondage and be free, To look on winds’ and waters’ strife, And breathe in my nostrils the breath of life. Give me not dim and slumbrous ease, But sounding storm and labouring seas, Not peaceful and untroubled years, But toil and warfare and passion and tears. And I would fall in valorous fight, And lie on lofty far-seen height. Yet how to burst these prison-bands, Forged by unseen spirit-hands? O seek not to burst our prison bands Forged by unseen spirit-hands. Clashing battle and labouring sea, These be for others, not for thee. Thou lover of storm and passion and war Break’st our charmed circle never more. “O, sing me a Song of the Wild West Wind” _O, sing_ me a song of the wild west wind, And his great sea-harrying flail, Of hardy mariners, copper skinned, That fly with a bursting sail. They see the clouds of crispèd white That shadow the distant hills, And filled are they with a strange delight As shaking away old ills. O, give me a boat that is sure and stark, And swift as a slinger’s stone, With a sail of canvas bronzèd dark, And I will go out alone: Nor fear nor sorrow my soul shall keep When around me lies the sea, And I will return with the night, and sleep In the wind’s wild harmony. Ære Perennius Written on Commemoration Sunday, Corpus Christi College, Oxford