William Ernest Henley

“ The One Race ever might starkly spread,
And the One Flag eagle it overhead!
In a rapture of wrath and faith and pride,
Thus they felt it, and thus they died;
So to the Maker of homes, to the Giver of bread,
For whose dear sake their triumphing souls they shed,
Blow, you bugles of England, blow,
Though you break the heart of her beaten foe,
Glory and praise to the everlasting Mother,
Glory and peace to her lovely and faithful dead! ”

“ Woman was truly woman, man was man,
And joy and sorrow were as much at home
In trifling Tunbridge as in mighty Rome.
Dead—dead and done with! Swift from shine to shade
The roaring generations flit and fade.
To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest,
We come to proffer—be it worst or best—
A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time;
A hint of what it might have held sublime;
A dream, an idyll, call it what you will,
Of man still Man, and woman—Woman still! ”

“ Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
For the strife of Love’s the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead. ”

“ And light as a dove’s homing wings, you came—
Came with your sweets to fill my hands,
My sense with your perfume.
We closed with lips
Grown weary and fain with longing from afar,
The while your grave, enamoured eyes
Drank down the dream in mine. ”

“ For what is life but love, the means,
And death, true Wife, the end?
p. 46XXXI
These glad, these great, these goodly days
Bewildering hope, outrunning praise,
The Earth, renewed by the great Sun’s longing,
Utters her joy in a million ways!
What is there left, sweet Soul and true—
What, for us and our dream to do? ”

“ And what was his errand but hers and mine—
The lords of him, I and she?
O, it’s die we must, but it’s live we can,
And the marvel of earth and sun
Is all for the joy of woman and man
And the longing that makes them one. ”

“ So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend
Through him that day; for now through him you know
That though where love was, love is till the end,
Love, turned of death to longing, like a foe,
Strikes: when the ruined heart goes forth to crave
Mercy of the high, austere, unpitying Grave. ”

“ All over the world, the nation, in a dream
Of money and love and sport, hangs at the paps
Of well-being, and so
Goes fattening, mellowing, dozing, rotting down
Into a rich deliquium of decay. ”

“ The lark have all his will,
The thrush be never done,
And April, May, and June
Go to the same blythe tune
As this blythe dream of mine!
Moon when the crocus peers,
Moon when the violet blows,
February Fair-Maid,
Haste, and let come the rose—
Let come the rose!
p. 12III
The night dislimns, and breaks
Like snows slow thawn;
An evil wind awakes
On lea and lawn;
The low East quakes; and hark! ”

“ Their feet in any by-way of Romance:
They, like two vagabond schoolboys, unafraid
Of stark impossibilities, essayed
To make these Penitent and Impenitent Thieves,
These Pews and Gaunts, each man of them with his sheaves
Of humour, passion, cruelty, tyranny, life,
Fit shadows for the boards; till in the strife
Of dream with dream, their Slaver-Saint came true,
And their Blind Pirate, their resurgent Pew
(A figure of deadly farce in his new birth) ,
Tap-tapped his way from Orcus back to earth ”

“ Strikes, as it must, for valour of heart,
Virtue, and patience, and unblenching hope,
And the inflexible resolve
That, come the World in arms,
This breeder of nations, England, keeping the seas
Hers as from God, shall in the sight of God
Stand justified of herself
Wherever her unretreating bugles blow!
Remember that she lived
That this magnificent Power might still perdure—
Your friend, your passionate servant, counsellor, Queen.
p. 109IV
Be that your chief of mourning—that!—
England, O Mother, and you,
The daughter Kingdoms born and reared
Of England’s travail and sweet blood ”

“ A people, haggard with defeat,
Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth,
Faces calamity, and goes into the fire
Another than it was. And in wild hours
A people, roaring ripe
With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed,
Sheds its old piddling aims,
p. 112Approves its virtue, puts behind itself
The comfortable dream, and goes,
Armoured and militant,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes, whereat the weak
Live not. But only the strong
Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve. ”

“ Even with the triumphing May—
The young-eyed, smiling, irresistible May!
Why do you loiter and linger, O most dear?
Why do you dream and palter and stay,
When every dawn, that rushes up the bay,
Brings nearer, and more near,
The Terror, the Discomforter, whose prey,
p. 27Belovèd, we must be? ”

“ Marked for reproaches from his life’s beginning;
Extremely sinned against as well as sinning;
Hack, spendthrift, starveling, duellist in turn;
Too cross to cherish yet too fierce to spurn;
Begrimed with ink or brave with wine and blood ”

“ That sink in England’s harness into the dream:
‘I die for England’s sake, and it is well’:
As now to this valiant, wonderful piece of earth,
To which the assembling nations bare the head,
And bend the knee,
In absolute veneration—once your Queen.
Sceptre and orb and crown,
High ensigns of a sovranty empaling
The glory and love and praise of a whole half-world,
Fall from her, and, preceding, she departs
Into the old, indissoluble Peace.
p. 110EPILOGUE
Into a land
Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred,
Helpless, degraded, desolate,
Peace, the White Angel, comes. ”

“ ’Tis the sole great thing
This side of death,
Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!’
So the bird saith—
The wise bird saith! ”

“ Under your country’s triumphing flag you fell.
It floats, true Heart, over no dearer grave—
Brave and brilliant and kind, hail and farewell!
p. 102LAST POST
The day’s high work is over and done,
And these no more will need the sun:
Blow, you bugles of England, blow! ”

“ Feel that the Tec, that plain-clothes Terror, is nigh.
p. 82X. NEWS-BOY
Take any station, pavement, circus, corner,
Where men their styles of print may call or choose,
And there—ten times more on it than Jack Horner—
There shall you find him swathed in sheets of news.
Nothing can stay the placing of his wares—
Not bus, nor cab, nor dray! The very Slop,
That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares,
And, daring, lands his public neck and crop.
Even the many-tortured London ear,
The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell,
His shriek of Winnur! ”

“ The drunkard’s mouth a-wash for something drinkable,
The drunkard’s eye alert for casual toppers,
The drunkard’s neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable,
A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers,
He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom-Come
Compact of sausage-and-mash and two-o’-rum!
p. 78VI. ’LIZA
’Liza’s old man’s perhaps a little shady,
’Liza’s old woman’s prone to booze and cringe;
But ’Liza deems herself a perfect lady,
And proves it in her feathers and her fringe. ”

“ He stands or falls, ere he these boards depart,
Not as dead Nature but as living Art.
p. 94III. ADMIRAL GUINEA
By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson,
Avenue Theatre, Monday, November 29, 1897.
Spoken by Miss Elizabeth Robins.
Once was an Age, an Age of blood and gold,
An Age of shipmen scoundrelly and bold—
Blackbeard and Avory, Singleton, Roberts, Kidd:
An Age which seemed, the while it rolled its quid,
Brave with adventure and doubloons and crime,
Rum and the Ebony Trade: when, time on time,
Real Pirates, right Sea-Highwaymen, could mock
The carrion strung at Execution Dock ”