William Ernest Henley

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,

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 …

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

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,

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

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.

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,

'Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.'

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

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

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

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?

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, …

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.

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.

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,

And, forgive and forget Or canker and fret, We can be no more As we were before. When it ends it ends With friends.

Friends.. old friends... One sees how it ends. A woman looks Or a man tells lies, And the pleasant brooks And the quiet skies,

As dust that drives, as straws that blow, Into the night go one and all.