William Ernest Henley

Fools may pine, and sots may swill,
Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,
Moralists may scourge and drill,
Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.…

He's called The General from the brazen craft And dash with which he sneaks a bit of road And all its fares; challenged, or chafed, or chaffed,
Back-answers of the newest he'll explode;
He reins his horses with an air; he treats With…

To me at my fifth-floor window
The chimney-pots in rows
Are sets of pipes pandean
For every wind that blows;And the smoke that whirls and eddies…

Joy of the Milliner,
Envy of the Line,
Star of the Parks, jack-booted, sworded, helmed,
He sits between his holsters, solid of spine;

O, have you blessed, behind the stars,
The blue sheen in the skies,
When June the roses round her calls?—
Then do you know the light that falls…

The sands are alive with sunshine,
The bathers lounge and throng,
And out in the bay a bugle
Is lilting a gallant song.The clouds go racing eastward,…

To W. A.Was I a Samurai renowned,
Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?
A histrion angular and profound?
A priest? a porter?—Child, although…

In Rotten Row a cigaretteI sat and smoked, with no
For all the tumult that had been.
The distances were still and green,
And streaked with shadows cool and wet.

To W. A.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.I saw, I took, I cast you by,…

Praise the generous gods for giving
In a world of wrath and strife,
With a little time for living,
Unto all the joy of life.At whatever source we drink it,…

Your heart has trembled to my tongue,
Your hands in mine have lain,
Your thought to me has leaned and clung,
Again and yet again,…

While the west is paling
Starshine is begun.
While the dusk is failing
Glimmers up the sun.So, till darkness cover…

Between the dusk of a summer night
And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began
With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of…

Где страсти все, что вы сыграли?
Где ваши слёзы, смех и стон?
Каких Отелло мы видали!
Каких видали Дездемон!…

In the year that's come and gone, love, his flying feather
Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together.
In the year that's coming on, though many a troth be broken,
We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken.In the year that's come and gone, dear, we wove a tether…

Давай напьёмся – и в благих мечтах
О разуме забудем, о стихах.
Вообразим, что средства, место, час
Совпали нынче именно для нас –…

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?…

Here in this dim, dull, double-bedded room,
I play the father to a brace of boys,
Ailing but apt for every sort of noise,
Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom.

Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack?
Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?
Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?
Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?…

O, the fun, the fun and frolic
That The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Scatters through a penny-whistle
Tickled with artistic fingers!Kate the scrubber (forty summers,…

Midsummer midnight skies,
Midsummer midnight influences and airs,
The shining, sensitive silver of the sea
Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn;…

Though, if you ask her name, she says "Elise," Being plain Elizabeth, e'en let it pass,
And own that, if her aspirates take their ease,
She ever makes a point, in washing glass,
Handling the engine, turning taps for tots,

Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellarage of hell,…

O, gather me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it!For with the dream foregone, foregone,…