William Ernest Henley

“ What miracle is happening in the air,
Charging the very texture of the gray
With something luminous and rare?
The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,
And, as one lights a candle, it is day.
The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire
On the little formal church, is not yet green
Across the water: but the house-tops nigher,
The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean,
How new, how naked! See the batch of boats,
Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!
And those are barges that were goblin floats,
Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! ”

“ Holy and high and impartial,
Death, the mother of Life,
Mingles all men for ever.
p. 24XV
‘THE CHIEF’ His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye
Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still.
Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfill—
His face at once benign and proud and shy.
If envy scout, if ignorance deny,
His faultless patience, his unyielding will,
Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill,
Innumerable gratitudes reply.
His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties,
And seems in all his patients to compel
Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. ”

“ Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were:
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe—
Dear, though it spoil and break us!—need we care
What is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
And we can conquer, though we may not share
In the rich quiet of the afterglow
What is to come. ”

“ And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs,
His melancholy close and closer yet
Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more—no more.
Something is dead . . .
’Tis time to creep in close about the fire
p. 208And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice
In the young life that round us leaps and laughs,
A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride
Of God’s best gift that to us twain returns,
Dear Heart, no more—no more. ”

“ In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether
All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.
In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses
We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.
p. 145In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather,
Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together.
In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow,
We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow. ”

“ He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do.
And it’s home, dearie, home . . .
O, there’s a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,
And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,
For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,
And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.
For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.
Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
They’re all growing green in the old countrie. ”

“ Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year—
The sting of the stirring sap
Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,
Their summer amplitudes of pomp,
Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,
Embittered housewifery
Of the lean Winter: all such things,
And with them all the goodness of the Master,
p. 252Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,
Whose left hand honours with decay and death.
Thus under the constraint of Night
These gross and simple creatures,
Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,
A servant of the Will! ”

“ Every kiss we take and give
Leaves us less of life to live.
Yet again! Your whim and mine
In a happy while have met.
All your sweets to me resign,
Nor regret
That we press with every breath,
Sighed or singing, nearer death.
1875
p. 124VIII We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere. ”

“ This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caress
Brings back to some faded face, beloved before,
A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore
Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech)
Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless
Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:
Till Clement’s, angular and cold and staid,
Gleams forth in glamour’s very stuffs arrayed;
And Bride’s, her aëry, unsubstantial charm
Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone
Grown flushed and warm,
Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown ”

“ Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.
Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message:—
‘Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.’
p. ”

“ Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;
And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;
p. 213And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!
Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt,
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set ”

“ 159What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Must up and follow her blindly.
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
In the being and the seeming,
And they that have heard the overword
Know life’s a dream worth dreaming. ”

“ The beautiful and bold adventurers!
Stationed out yonder in the isle,
The tall Policeman,
Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers
About him in the ancient vacancy,
Tells them this way is safety—this way home.
p. 216IV It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,
Out of the deep into the dark
On for the years to be. ”

“ And who shall reckon what lives may live
In the life that we bade to be?
p. 217V Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow?—
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew:
What is it worth unless I win,
Love—love and you? ”

“ And the ghastly Dreams that tend you,
Your growth began with the life of Man,
And only his death can end you.
They may tug in line at your hempen twine,
They may flourish with axe and saw;
But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs
In the living rock of Law.
And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork,
When the spent sun reels and blunders
p. 238Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit
As it seethes in spate and thunders,
Stern on the glare of the tortured air
Your lines august shall gloom,
And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed
In the ruining roar of Doom. ”

“ Just as an hundred years to come they will:—
When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low,
And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil,
Nor any sunset fade serene and slow;
But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die. ”

“ The breathing of Life and Death,
The secular Accomplices,
Renewing the visible miracle of the world.
The wistful stars
Shine like good memories. The young morning wind
Blows full of unforgotten hours
As over a region of roses. Life and Death
Sound on—sound on . . . ”

“ In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
p. 188On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge) ,
With light, with living light, from marge to marge
Until the course He set and staked be run.
Through street and square, through square and street,
Each with his home-grown quality of dark
And violated silence, loud and fleet,
Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,
The hansom wheels and plunges. ”

“ Life a last year’s Nightingale,
Love a last year’s Rose.
p. 178XLVI
MATRI DILECTISSIMÆ
I. M. In the waste hour
Between to-day and yesterday
We watched, while on my arm—
Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—
Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
Till the dear face turned dead,
And to a sound of lamentation
The good, heroic soul with all its wealth—
Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,
Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbed
In the inexorable Peace,
And life was changed to us for evermore. ”

“ Are worthy our desire?
Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
For ungirt loins and lamps unlit;
In front, the unmanageable years,
The trap upon the Pit;
Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:
Arise! ”

“ Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,
Death in his threadbare working trim—
Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,
And with expert, inevitable hand
Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,
p. 199Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:
Thus signifying unto old and young,
However hard of mouth or wild of whim,
’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to part
From books and women and talk and drink and art. ”

“ Madam Life’s a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She’s the tenant of the room,
He’s the ruffian on the stair. ”

“ Wild hands of warning in the face
Of some inevitable advance of the doom;
Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing
As in some monstrous market-place,
They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,
In that old speech their forefathers
Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard
p. 251The troubled voice of Eve
Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.
Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell
The tale of their dim life, with all
Its compost of experience: how the Sun
Spreads them their daily feast,
Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine ”

“ We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.
p. 125We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
We’ll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear. ”

“ Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades,
What grace, what glamour, what wild will,
Transfigure the shadows? Whose,
Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?
Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air
Teems with them even to the gleaming ends
Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts,
Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you
At last—dear love, at last!—
Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death,
Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.
p. 227XI Gulls in an aëry morrice
Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .
The full sea, sleepily basking,
Dreams under skies of dream. ”

“ To the spell of the wave and the shore;
And now, as the glad stars rise,
She comes to me, rosy and rare,
The delight of the wind in her eyes
And the hand of the wind in her hair.
1872
p. 117II Life is bitter. All the faces of the years,
Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears.
Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . .
Let me sleep.
Riches won but mock the old, unable years;
Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears ”

“ Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
Round the world on your bugles blown!
Where shall the watchful Sun,
England, my England,
Match the master-work you’ve done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
Down the years on your bugles blown?
p. 254Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:—
‘Take and break us: we are yours,
‘England, my own!
‘Life is good, and joy runs high
‘Between English earth and sky:
‘Death is death ”

“ These are a type of the world of Age.
Envoy
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl—
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A smouldering hearth and a silent stage—
These are a type of the world of Age. ”

“ When June the roses round her calls?—
Then do you know the light that falls
From her belovèd eyes.
And have you felt the sense of peace
That morning meadows give?—
Then do you know the spirit of grace,
The angel abiding in her face,
Who makes it good to live.
She shines before me, hope and dream,
So fair, so still, so wise,
That, winning her, I seem to win
Out of the dust and drive and din
A nook of Paradise.
1877
p. 156XXXII
To D. H. O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay,
And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day ”

“ Now die the dream, or come the wife,
The past is not in vain,
For wholly as it was your life
Can never be again,
My dear,
Can never be again. ”