William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley (23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903) was an English poet, critic and editor.

Quotes

Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.
- Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation (London: David Nutt, 1890), "Hugo", pp. 63–64

Ho! then, the splendour
And sheen of my ministry,
Clothing the earth
With a livery of lightnings!
Ho! then, the music
Of battles in onset
And ruining armours,
And God's gift returning
In fury to God!
Glittering and keen
As the song of the winter stars,
Ho! then, the sound
Of my voice, the implacable
Angel of Destiny!—
I am the Sword.
- The Song of the Sword, and Other Verses (London: David Nutt, 1892), title poem
- Compare: Ezekiel 21:9–10

Hark how the Trumpet,
The mistress of mistresses,
Calls, silver-throated
And stern, where the tables
Are spread, and the work
Of the Lord is in hand!
Driving the darkness,
Even as the banners
And spears of the Morning;
Sifting the nations,
The slag from the metal,
The waste and the weak
From the fit and the strong;
Fighting the brute.
- The Song of the Sword, &c. (1892) title poem

A Book of Verses (1888)

London: David Nutt

Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.
- "In Hospital", II. "Waiting"

Far in the stillness a cat
Languishes loudly. A cinder
Falls, and the shadows
Lurch to the leap of the flame.
- "In Hospital", VII. "Vigil"

From the winter's gray despair,
From the summer’s golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.
- "In Hospital", XIV. "Ave, Caesar!"

Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn.
- "In Hospital", XVI. "House-Surgeon"

Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter-Catechist.
- "In Hospital", XXV. "Apparition"

Out of the night that covers me,
  Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
  For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
  Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
  Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
  How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul.
- "Life and Death" (Echoes), IV (1875)
- Titled "Invictus" in Q's Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) no. 842, p. 1019. Read by Alan Bates, UBS TV-Commercial Series "Poems 1997", CNN [1] · Read by Morgan Freeman in Invictus (2009 film) [2]
- Compare: James B. Kenyon, "A Challenge", An Oaten Pipe (1895) p. 69:
  Arise, O Soul, and gird thee up anew,
  Though the black camel Death kneel at thy gate;
  No beggar thou that thou for alms shouldst sue;
  Be the proud captain still of thine own fate!

Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XXXIV. "Margaritæ Sorori, I. M." (1876)

So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XXXIV. "Margaritæ Sorori, I. M."

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon,
And you were a Christian slave.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XXXV

I captain an army
Of shining and generous dreams.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XXXIX. "To R. A. M. S."

As dust that drives, as straws that blow,
Into the night go one and all.
- "Ballades", "Of Dead Actors: To E. J. H.", Envoy

Friends.. old friends...
One sees how it ends.
A woman looks
Or a man tells lies,
And the pleasant brooks
And the quiet skies,
Ruined with brawling
And caterwauling,
Enchant no more
As they did before;
And so it ends
With friends.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XLI
- Compare: Job 19:13–14

And, forgive and forget
Or canker and fret,
We can be no more
As we were before.
When it ends it ends
With friends.
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XLI

There let it rest.
It has fought and won,
And is still the best
That either has done.
Each as he stands
The work of its hands,
Which shall be more
As he was before?
What is it ends
With friends?
- "Life and Death (Echoes)", XLI
- 3rd ed. (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1891) pp. 111–112. Not in the 1st ed. (1891)

Poems (1898)

London: David Nutt

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.
- "Echoes", IX. "To W. R." (1877)

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
And 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.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", Prologue

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", II. "To R. F. B."

East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.
Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease —
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!) —
Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", II. "To R. F. B."

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?
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", II. "To R. F. B."

Failing yet gracious,
Slow pacing, soon homing,
A patriarch that strolls
Through the tents of his children,
The sun as he journeys
His round on the lower
Ascents of the blue,
Washes the roofs
And the hillsides with clarity.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", VIII. "To A. J. H."

Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XII

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:
Arise! no more a living lie,
And with me quicken and control
Some memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XII

Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
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.'
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XIV. "To J. A. C."

You played and sang a snatch of song,
  A song that all-too well we knew;
But whither had flown the ancient wrong;
  And was it really I and you?
O, since the end of life's to live
  And pay in pence the common debt,
What should it cost us to forgive
  Whose daily task is to forget?
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XV

Dear, was it really you and I?
In truth the riddle's ill to read,
So many are the deaths we die
Before we can be dead indeed.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XV

Life — life — let there be life!
Better a thousand times the roaring hours
When wave and wind,
Like the Arch-Murderer in flight
From the Avenger at his heel,
Storm through the desolate fastnesses
And wild waste places of the world!
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XVI

Life — give me life until the end,
That at the very top of being,
The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,
Out of the reddest hell of the fight
I may be snatched and flung
Into the everlasting lull,
The immortal, incommunicable dream.
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XVI

What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
- "Rhymes and Rhythms", XXV

Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)

London: David Nutt

My songs were once of the sunrise:
  They shouted it over the bar;
First-footing the dawns, they flourished,
  And flamed with the morning star.
My songs are now of the sunset:
  Their brows are touched with light,
But their feet are lost in the shadows
  And wet with the dews of night.
- Envoy

Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing
This side of death,
Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
- XI

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.
- XXI

Into a land
Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred,
Helpless, degraded, desolate,
Peace, the White Angel, comes.
Her eyes are as a mother's. Her good hands
Are comforting, and helping; and her voice
Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring
Falls on the World, and there is no more pain.
- Epilogue

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.
- Epilogue

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,
Approves 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.
- Epilogue

Quotes about Henley

In the days of my early acquaintance with Henley, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I could never look at him without wondering why none of his artist friends had taken him for a model of Pan. They say he was like Johnson, and like Heine; and he had something of both. But to me he was the startling image of Pan come on earth and clothed—the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river, with halting foot and flaming shaggy hair, and arms and shoulders huge and threatening, like those of some Faun or Satyr of the ancient woods, and the brow and eyes of the Olympians. Wellnigh captive to his chair, with the crutch never far from his elbow, dragging himself when he moved, with slow effort, he yet seemed instinct with the life of the germinating elemental earth, when gods and men were vital with the force that throbbed in beast and flower and wandering breeze. The large heart, and the large frame, the broad tolerant smile, the inexhaustible interest in nature and mankind, the brave, unquenchable cheerfulness under afflictions and adversities, the frank appreciation and apology for the animal side of things, all helped to maintain the impression of a kind of Pagan strength and simplicity.
- Sidney Low, "William Ernest Henley: Some Memories and Impressions", The Living Age (17 October 1903), p. 150

Of Henley the talker, at least, one portrait remains. He was the original of Stevenson's Burly the talker who would roar you down, bury his face in his hands, undergo passions of revolt and agony, letting loose a spring torrent of words. There was always a wild flood and storm of talk wherever Henley might be.
- Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nights: Rome, Venice in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris in the Fighting Nineties (1916), p. 134

Henley's talk was animated above all by the intense and virile love of life that I was so conscious of in him personally, that reveals itself in every line he wrote, and that is what I liked best about him. He was so alive, so exhilarated with the sense of being alive. The tremendous vitality of the man, that should have found its legitimate outlet in physical activity, seemed to have gone instead into his thought and his expression of it as if the very fact that fate forced him to remain a looker-on had made him the more sensitive to the beauty, the joy, the challenge in everything life gave him to look at. He could wrest romance even out of the drear, drab hospital.
- Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nights (1916), pp. 145-146

It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is both conciliatory and receptive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Memories and Portraits (1887), p. 153

He founded a school, and has survived all his disciples. He has always thought too much about himself, which is wise; and written too much about others, which is foolish. His prose is the beautiful prose of a poet, and his poetry the beautiful poetry of a prose-writer. His personality is insistent. To converse with him is a physical no less than an intellectual recreation. He is never forgotten by his enemies, and often forgiven by his friends. He has added several new words to the language, and his style is an open secret. He has fought a good fight, and has had to face every difficulty except popularity.
- Oscar Wilde, to Will Rothenstein (14 August 1897), in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (1962), p. 631

He was most human—human, I used to say, like one of Shakespeare's characters—and yet pressed and pummelled, as it were, into a single attitude, almost into a gesture and a speech, as by some overwhelming situation. I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words.
- William Butler Yeats, Four Years (1921), p. 10

He terrified us also, and certainly I did not dare, and I think none of us dared, to speak our admiration for book or picture he condemned, but he made us feel always our importance, and no man among us could do good work, or show the promise of it, and lack his praise.
- William Butler Yeats, Four Years (1921), p. 14

External links

Encyclopedic article on William Ernest Henley on Wikipedia
Works related to William Ernest Henley on Wikisource