Poems

Part 1

Transcribed from the 1907 David Nutt edition by Diarmuid Pigott with some additional material and proofing by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

POEMS

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

* * * * *

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die.

SHAKESPEARE

* * * * *

Tenth Impression

* * * * *

LONDON Published by DAVID NUTT at the Sign of the Phœnix IN LONG ACRE 1907

First Edition printed January 1898 Second Edition printed March 1898 Third Edition printed September 1898 Fourth Edition printed January 1900 Fifth Edition printed December 1901 Sixth Impression printed August 1903 Seventh Impression printed 1904 February Eighth Impression printed May 1905 Ninth Impresion printed April 1906 Tenth Impression printed Nov. 1907

* * * * *

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

TO MY WIFE

Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs, For, old or new, All that is good in them belongs Only to you;

And, singing as when all was young, They will recall Those others, lived but left unsung— The bent of all.

W. E. H

APRIL 1888 SEPTEMBER 1897.

ADVERTISEMENT

My friend and publisher, Mr. Alfred Nutt, asks me to introduce this re-issue of old work in a new shape. At his request, then, I have to say that nearly all the numbers contained in the present volume are reprinted from ‘A Book of Verses’ (1888) and ‘London Voluntaries’ (1892–3). From the first of these I have removed some copies of verse which seemed to me scarce worth keeping; and I have recovered for it certain others from those publications which had made room for them. I have corrected where I could, added such dates as I might, and, by re-arrangement and revision, done my best to give my book, such as it is, its final form. If any be displeased by the result, I can but submit that my verses are my own, and that this is how I would have them read.

The work of revision has reminded me that, small as is this book of mine, it is all in the matter of verse that I have to show for the years between 1872 and 1897. A principal reason is that, after spending the better part of my life in the pursuit of poetry, I found myself (about 1877) so utterly unmarketable that I had to own myself beaten in art, and to addict myself to journalism for the next ten years. Came the production by my old friend, Mr. H. B. Donkin, in his little collection of ‘Voluntaries’ (1888), compiled for that East-End Hospital to which he has devoted so much time and energy and skill, of those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme, my impressions of the Old Edinburgh Infirmary. They had long since been rejected by every editor of standing in London—I had well-nigh said in the world; but as soon as Mr. Nutt had read them, he entreated me to look for more. I did as I was told; old dusty sheaves were dragged to light; the work of selection and correction was begun; I burned much; I found that, after all, the lyrical instinct had slept—not died; I ventured (in brief) ‘A Book of Verses.’ It was received with so much interest that I took heart once more, and wrote the numbers presently reprinted from ‘The National Observer’ in the collection first (1892) called ‘The Song of the Sword’ and afterwards (1893), ‘London voluntaries.’ If I have said nothing since, it is that I have nothing to say which is not, as yet, too personal—too personal and too a afflicting—for utterance.

For the matter of my book, it is there to speak for itself:—

‘Here’s a sigh to those who love me And a smile to those who hate.’

I refer to it for the simple pleasure of reflecting that it has made me many friends and some enemies.

W. E. H.

Muswell Hill, 4th September 1897.

CONTENTS

IN HOSPITAL PAGE I. Enter Patient 3 II. Waiting 4 III. Interior 5 IV. Before 6 V. Operation 7 VI. After 9 VII. Vigil 10 VIII. Staff-Nurse: Old Style 13 IX. Lady Probationer 14 X. Staff-Nurse: New Style 15 XI. Clinical 16 XII. Etching 19 XIII. Casualty 21 XIV. Ave, Caeser! 23 XV. ‘The Chief’ 24 XVI. House-Surgeon 25 XVII. Interlude 26 XVIII. Children: Private Ward 28 XIX. Srcubber 29 XX. Visitor 30 XXI. Romance 31 XXII. Pastoral 33 XXIII. Music 35 XXIV. Suicide 37 XXV. Apparition 39 XXVI. Anterotics 40 XXVII. Nocturn 41 XXVIII. Discharged 42 ENVOY 44 THE SONG OF THE SWORD 47 ARABIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS 57 BRIC-À-BRAC Ballade of the Toyokuni Colour-Print 79 Ballade of Youth and Age 81 Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights 83 Ballade of Dead Actors 85 Ballade Made in the Hot Weather 87 Ballade of Truisms 89 Double Ballade of Life and Death 91 Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things 94 At Queensferry 98 Orientale 99 In Fisherrow 100 Back-View 101 Croquis 102 Attadale, West Highlands 103 From a Window in Princes Street 104 In the Dials 105 The gods are dead 106 Let us be drunk 107 When you are old 108 Beside the idle summer sea 109 The ways of Death are soothing and serene 110 We shall surely die 111 What is to come 112 ECHOES I. To my mother 115 II. Life is bitter 117 III. O, gather me the rose 118 IV. Out of the night that covers me 119 V. I am the Reaper 120 VI. Praise the generous gods 122 VII. Fill a glass with golden wine 123 VIII. We’ll go no more a-roving 124 IX. Madam Life’s a piece in bloom 126 X. The sea is full of wandering foam 127 XI. Thick is the darkness 128 XII. To me at my fifth-floor window 129 XIII. Bring her again, O western wind 130 XIV. The wan sun westers, faint and slow 131 XV. There is a wheel inside my head 133 XVI. While the west is paling 134 XVII. The sands are alive with sunshine 135 XVIII. The nightingale has a lyre of gold 136 XIX. Your heart has trembled to my tongue 137 XX. The surges gushed and sounded 138 XXI. We flash across the level 139 XXII. The West a glimmering lake of light 140 XXIII. The skies are strown with stars 142 XXIV. The full sea rolls and thunders 143 XXV. In the year that’s come and gone 144 XXVI. In the placid summer midnight 146 XXVII. She sauntered by the swinging seas 148 XXVIII. Blithe dreams arise to greet us 149 XXIX. A child 152 XXX. Kate-A-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams 154 XXXI. O, have you blessed, behind the stars 155 XXXII. O, Falmouth is a fine town 156 XXXIII. The ways are green 158 XXXIV. Life in her creaking shoes 169 XXXV. A late lark twitters from the quiet skies 161 XXXVI. I gave my heart to a woman 163 XXXVII. Or ever the knightly years were gone 164 XXXVIII. On the way to Kew 166 XXXIX. The past was goodly once 168 XL. The spring, my dear 169 XLI. The Spirit of Wine 170 XLII. A Wink from Hesper 172 XLIII. Friends. . . old friends 173 XLIV. If it should come to be 175 XLV. From the brake the Nightingale 179 XLVI. In the waste hour 178 XLVII. Crosses and troubles 181 LONDON VOLUNTARIES I. Grave 185 II. Andante con Moto 187 III. Scherzando 192 IV. Largo e Mesto 186 V. Allegro Maëstoso 200 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS PROLOGUE 207 I. Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade 209 II. We are the Choice of the Will 211 III. A desolate shore 214 IV. It came with the threat of a waning moon 216 V. Why, my heart, do we love her so? 217 VI. One with the ruined sunset 218 VII. There’s a regret 219 VIII. Time and the Earth 221 IX. As like the Woman as you can 223 X. Midsummer midnight skies 225 XI. Gulls in an aery morrice 227 XII. Some starlit garden grey with dew 228 XIII. Under a stagnant sky 229 XIV. Fresh from his fastnesses 231 XV. You played and sang a snatch of song 233 XVI. Space and dread and the dark 234 XVII. Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook 236 XVIII. When you wake in your crib 239 XIX. O, Time and Change 242 XX. The shadow of Dawn 243 XXI. When the wind storms by with a shout 244 XXII. Trees and the menace of night 245 XXIII. Here they trysted, here they strayed 247 XXIV. Not to the staring Day 249 XXV. What have I done for you 251 EPILOGUE 256

Part 2

IN HOSPITAL

On ne saurait dire à quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et malade, devient personnel.—

BALZAC.

I ENTER PATIENT

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. Thro’ the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom A small, strange child—so agèd yet so young!— Her little arm besplinted and beslung, Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room. I limp behind, my confidence all gone. The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on, And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail: A tragic meanness seems so to environ These corridors and stairs of stone and iron, Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail.

Continue reading Poems free in the Wunder reader →