William Ernest Henley

Friends . . . old friends . . .
One sees how it ends.
A woman looks
Or a man tells lies,…

Since those we love and those we hate,
With all things mean and all things great,
Pass in a desperate disarray
Over the hills and far away:It must be, Dear, that, late or soon,…

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
As in a dream preposterous and sublime,…

A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,…

В глухой ночи без берегов,
Когда последний свет потух,
Благодарю любых богов
За мой непобедимый дух.Судьбою заключен в тиски,…

At the barren heart of midnight,
When the shadow shuts and opens
As the loud flames pulse and flutter,
I can hear a cistern leaking.Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm,…

She's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad
With flashes of the old fun's
There lowers the fixed and peevish
Bred of a past where troubles came apace.

Chiming a dream by the way
With ocean’s rapture and roar,
I met a maiden to-day
Walking alone on the shore:…

So went our boys when Edward Sixth, the King,
Chartered Christ's Hospital, and died.
And so Full fifteen generations in a string Of heirs to his bequest have had to go.
Thus Camden showed, and Barnes, and Stillingfleet

The morning mists still haunt the stony street;
The northern summer air is shrill and cold;
And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,
Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet.…

When you are old, and I am passed away –Passed, and your face, your golden face is gray –I think, what’er the end, this dream of mine,
Comforting you, a friendly star will
Down the dim slope where you still stumble and stray.
So…

To C. M.Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
The moss they overspill;
Pools that the breezes crinkle;
The wheel beside the mill,…

To W. R.Thick is the darkness—
Sunward, O, sunward!
Rough is the highway—
Onward, still onward!Dawn harbours surely…

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lemprière undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated…

It’s the Spring.
Earth has conceived, and her bosom,
Teeming with summer, is glad.Vistas of change and adventure,
Thro’ the green land…

Lived on one’s back,
In the long hours of repose,
Life is a practical nightmare—
Hideous asleep or awake.Shoulders and loins…

Staring corpselike at the ceiling,
See his harsh, unrazored features,
Ghastly brown against the pillow,
And his throat—so strangely bandaged!

Space and dread and the dark -
Over a livid stretch of sky
Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train
Of huge, primeval presences…

Two and thirty is the ploughman.
He’s a man of gallant inches,
And his hair is close and curly,
And his beard;…

To D. F.I watched you saunter down the sand:
Serene and large, the golden weather
Flowed radiant round your peacock feather,
And glistered from your jewelled hand.…

To S. C.Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.…

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…

Laughs the happy April morn
Thro’ my grimy, little window,
And a shaft of sunshine pushes
Thro’ the shadows in the square.Dogs are tracing thro’ the grass,…

To W. B.From the brake the Nightingale
Sings exulting to the Rose;
Though he sees her waxing pale
In her passionate repose,…