William Ernest Henley

A desolate shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

A wink from Hesper, falling Fast in the wintry sky, Comes through the even blue,

By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson, Avenue Theatre, Monday, November 29, 1897. Spoken by Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS. Once was an Age, an Age of blood and gold,

'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!' - Fantasio. Once on a time There was a little boy:    a master-mage

'As like the Woman as you can' - (Thus the New Adam was beguiled) - 'So shall you touch the Perfect Man' -

The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean We bowled along a road that curved a spine Superbly sinuous and serpentine

A black and glassy float, opaque and still, The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep, Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep

I watched you saunter down the sand: Serene and large, the golden weather Flowed radiant round your peacock feather,

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams -

(1829-1896) Spring at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall,

Fountains that frisk and sprinkle The moss they overspill; Pools that the breezes crinkle;

Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound?

Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed

Gold or silver, every day, Dies to gray. There are knots in every skein.

By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson, Haymarket Theatre, November 3, 1890. Spoken by Mr. TREE in the character of Beau Austin.

Beside the idle summer sea And in the vacant summer days, Light Love came fluting down the ways,

Bring her again, O western wind, Over the western sea: Gentle and good and fair and kind,

The beach was crowded.    Pausing now and then, He groped and fiddled doggedly along, His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng

Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me. One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me. I have worked and dreamed, and I've talked at will.

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

Fools may pine, and sots may swill, Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, Moralists may scourge and drill,

The big teetotum twirls, And epochs wax and wane As chance subsides or swirls;

Do you remember That afternoon - that Sunday afternoon! - When, as the kirks were ringing in,

These, to you now, O, more than ever now - Now that the Ancient Enemy Has passed, and we, we two that are one, have seen

Fill a glass with golden wine, And the while your lips are wet Set their perfume unto mine,

To J. A. C. Fresh from his fastnesses Wholesome and spacious,

Friends . . . old friends . . . One sees how it ends. A woman looks

Above the Crags that fade and gloom Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat; Ridged high against the evening bloom,

Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . The full sea, sleepily basking,

ENVOY My songs were once of the sunrise: They shouted it over the bar;

Her little feet!... Beneath us ranged the sea, She sat, from sun and wind umbrella-shaded, One shoe above the other danglingly,

To P. A. G. Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon,

I am the Reaper. All things with heedful hook Silent I gather.

I gave my heart to a woman - I gave it her, branch and root. She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies; And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended,

The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. From camp and church, the fireside and the street,

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be

If it should come to be, This proof of you and me, This type and sign

A hard north-easter fifty winters long Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck; Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck;

On ne saurait dire e quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et malade, devient personnel. - BALZAC

The morning mists still haunt the stony street; The northern summer air is shrill and cold; And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,

A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion), Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;

The gaunt brown walls Look infinite in their decent meanness. There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle,

Behold me waiting - waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform,

Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years; A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin; Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin,

You are carried in a basket, Like a carcase from the shambles, To the theatre, a cockpit

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, So through the anaesthetic shows my life; So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife

Lived on one's back, In the long hours of repose, Life is a practical nightmare -

The greater masters of the commonplace, REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER - only these Could paint her all to you:    experienced ease

Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast Into the sere of virginal decay, I view her as she enters, day by day,

Hist? . . . Through the corridor's echoes, Louder and nearer

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

As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways:

From the winter's grey despair, From the summer's golden languor, Death, the lover of Life,

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 -

Exceeding tall, but built so well his height Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb; Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim;

O, the fun, the fun and frolic That The Wind that Shakes the Barley Scatters through a penny-whistle

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,

She's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face With flashes of the old fun's animation There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation

Her little face is like a walnut shell With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;

'Talk of pluck!' pursued the Sailor, Set at euchre on his elbow, 'I was on the wharf at Charleston,

It's the Spring. Earth has conceived, and her bosom, Teeming with summer, is glad.

Down the quiet eve, Thro' my window with the sunset Pipes to me a distant organ

Staring corpselike at the ceiling, See his harsh, unrazored features, Ghastly brown against the pillow,

Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, Neat-footed and weak-fingered:    in his face - Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,

Laughs the happy April morn Thro' my grimy, little window, And a shaft of sunshine pushes

At the barren heart of midnight, When the shadow shuts and opens As the loud flames pulse and flutter,

Carry me out Into the wind and the sunshine, Into the beautiful world.

London, December 10, 1869. Ladysmith, January 15, 1900. We cheered you forth - brilliant and kind and brave.

(May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901) Sceptre and orb and crown, High ensigns of a sovranty containing

(Ob. October 30, 1897) He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint, Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,

To GARRYOWEN upon an organ ground Two girls are jigging.    Riotously they trip, With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip,

In the placid summer midnight, Under the drowsy sky, I seem to hear in the stillness

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,

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be

It came with the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less,

Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams, Still debating, still delay, And the world's a ghost that gleams -

The day's high work is over and done, And these no more will need the sun: Blow, you bugles of ENGLAND, blow!

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?

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,

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

Far out of bounds he's figured - in a race Of West-End traffic pitching to his loss. But if you'd see him in his proper place,

His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story - A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are ENGLAND'S wonder, and shame, and glory

Army Reserve; a worshipper of BOBS, With whom he stripped the smock from CANDAHAR; Neat as his mount, that neatest among cobs;

An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; ST. MARTIN'S STEPS, where every venomous gust

'LIZA'S old man's perhaps a little shady, 'LIZA'S old woman's prone to booze and cringe; But 'LIZA deems herself a perfect lady,

Time, the old humourist, has a trick to-day Of moving landmarks and of levelling down, Till into Town the Suburbs edge their way,

So went our boys when EDWARD SIXTH, the King, Chartered CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, and died.    And so Full fifteen generations in a string

Take any station, pavement, circus, corner, Where men their styles of print may call or choose, And there - ten times more on it than JACK HORNER -

Who says Drum-Major says a man of mould, Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread, And pacing still, a triumph to behold,

There's never a delicate nurseling of the year But our huge LONDON hails it, and delights To wear it on her breast or at her ear,

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,

St. Margaret's bells, Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles, Sing in the storied air,

Forth from the dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,

Down through the ancient Strand The spirit of October, mild and boon And sauntering, takes his way

Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released

Spring winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow,

In the waste hour Between to-day and yesterday We watched, while on my arm -

Midsummer midnight skies, Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining, sensitive silver of the sea

To A. C. Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues

O, gather me the rose, the rose, While yet in flower we find it, For summer smiles, but summer goes,

O, have you blessed, behind the stars, The blue sheen in the skies, When June the roses round her calls? -

I. M. - R. L. S.    (1850-1894) O, Time and Change, they range and range From sunshine round to thunder! -

On the way to Kew, By the river old and gray, Where in the Long Ago

One with the ruined sunset, The strange forsaken sands, What is it waits, and wanders,

She's an enchanting little Israelite, A world of hidden dimples! - Dusky-eyed, A starry-glancing daughter of the Bride,

Praise the generous gods for giving In a world of wrath and strife With a little time for living,

These to the glory and praise of the green land That bred my women, and that holds my dead, ENGLAND, and with her the strong broods that stand

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade

A desolate shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

(To R. F. B.) We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

It came with the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less,

'As like the Woman as you can', (Thus the New Adam was beguiled) 'So shall you touch the Perfect Man',

Something is dead . . . The grace of sunset solitudes, the march Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power

Why, my heart, do we love her so? (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Why does the great sea ebb and flow?

Space and dread and the dark, Over a livid stretch of sky Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral train

There's a regret So grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. . . .

(To J. A. C.) Fresh from his fastnesses Wholesome and spacious,

Midsummer midnight skies, Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining sensitive silver of the sea

Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . The full sea, sleepily basking,

Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you

(To James McNeill Whistler) Under a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,

Time and the Earth, The old Father and Mother, Their teeming accomplished,

O Time and Change, they range and range From sunshine round to thunder! They glance and go as the great winds blow,

You played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong;

One with the ruined sunset, The strange forsaken sands, What is it waits and wanders

CARMEN PATIBULARE (To H. S.) Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook

(To M. E. H.) When you wake in your crib, You, an inch of experience,

The shadow of Dawn; Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep;

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves Exult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life

Trees and the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell

(To P. A. G.) Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon,

(To A. C.) What should the Trees, Midsummer-manifold, each one,

What have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do,

By J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson, Criterion Theatre, April 16, 1891. To other boards for pun and song and dance! Our purpose is an essay in romance:

She sauntered by the swinging seas, A jewel glittered at her ear, And, teasing her along, the breeze

Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you

Space and dread and the dark - Over a livid stretch of sky Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train

The full sea rolls and thunders In glory and in glee. O, bury me not in the senseless earth

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows? Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,

The Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is said, The best of it we know is that it's done and dead. Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond recall,

The sands are alive with sunshine, The bathers lounge and throng, And out in the bay a bugle

The sea is full of wandering foam, The sky of driving cloud; My restless thoughts among them roam . . .

The shadow of Dawn; Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep;

The skies are strown with stars, The streets are fresh with dew A thin moon drifts to westward,

The Sword Singing - The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword

The spring, my dear, Is no longer spring. Does the blackbird sing

The surges gushed and sounded, The blue was the blue of June, And low above the brightening east

The wan sun westers, faint and slow; The eastern distance glimmers gray; An eerie haze comes creeping low

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen Of the young year's fairest daughter. O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing wheat!

The West a glimmering lake of light, A dream of pearly weather, The first of stars is burning white -

There is a wheel inside my head Of wantonness and wine, An old, cracked fiddle is begging without,

There's a regret So grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . .

To A. J. H. Time and the Earth - The old Father and Mother -

The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion-call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,

O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day; I wish from my heart I was far away from here,

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget, Forget, and, ceasing even from regret, Live without reason and despite of rhyme,

Love blows as the wind blows, Love blows into the heart. - Nile Boat-Song

To me at my fifth-floor window The chimney-pots in rows Are sets of pipes pandean

Chiming a dream by the way With ocean's rapture and roar, I met a maiden to-day

The Spirit of Wine Sang in my glass, and I listened With love to his odorous music,

A child, Curious and innocent, Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing

Blithe dreams arise to greet us, And life feels clean and new, For the old love comes to meet us

Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon

From the brake the Nightingale Sings exulting to the Rose; Though he sees her waxing pale

Madam Life's a piece in bloom Death goes dogging everywhere: She's the tenant of the room,

Thick is the darkness - Sunward, O, sunward! Rough is the highway -

Carmen Patibulare - To H. S. Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook And the rope of the Black Election,

Trees and the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell,

(February 15 - September 28, 1894) To V. G. That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie

To R. F. B. We are the Choice of the Will:    God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

We flash across the level. We thunder thro' the bridges. We bicker down the cuttings.

We shall surely die: Must we needs grow old? Grow old and cold,

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.

What have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do,

What is to come we know not.    But we know That what has been was good, was good to show, Better to hide, and best of all to bear.

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life

When you are old, and I am passed away Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine,

I. M. - Margaret Emma Henley (1888-1894) When you wake in your crib, You, an inch of experience -

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade

While the west is paling Starshine is begun. While the dusk is failing

Why, my heart, do we love her so? (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Why does the great sea ebb and flow? -

You played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong;

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