POEMS
By
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
p. ivFirst 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 February
1904
Eighth Impression printed May
1905
Ninth Impresion printed April
1906
Tenth Impression printed Nov.
1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
p. vTO 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.
p. viiADVERTISEMENT
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 p. viiisince 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.
p. ixCONTENTS
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
p. xXXIV.
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
p. xiThe 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
p. xiiXXVIII.
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
p. xiiiIII.
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
p. 1IN HOSPITAL
p. 2On ne saurait dire à quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et malade, devient personnel.— Balzac.
p. 3I 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.
p. 4II WAITING
A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion), Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; Scissors and lint and apothecary’s jars.
Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from, Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted: Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach, While at their ease two dressers do their chores.
One has a probe—it feels to me a crowbar. A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone. A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers. Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.
p. 5III INTERIOR
The gaunt brown walls Look infinite in their decent meanness. There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, The fulsome fire.
The atmosphere Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist. Dressings and lint on the long, lean table— Whom are they for?
The patients yawn, Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. It’s grim and strange.
Far footfalls clank. The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . . O, a gruesome world!
p. 6IV BEFORE
Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. The gods are good to me: I have no wife, No innocent child, to think of as I near The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready. But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady!
p. 7V OPERATION
You are carried in a basket, Like a carcase from the shambles, To the theatre, a cockpit Where they stretch you on a table.
Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.
And you gasp and reel and shudder In a rushing, swaying rapture, While the voices at your elbow Fade—receding—fainter—farther.
Lights about you shower and tumble, And your blood seems crystallising— Edged and vibrant, yet within you Racked and hurried back and forward.
p. 8Then the lights grow fast and furious, And you hear a noise of waters, And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, In an agony of effort,
Till a sudden lull accepts you, And you sound an utter darkness . . . And awaken . . . with a struggle . . . On a hushed, attentive audience.
p. 9VI AFTER
Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, So through the anæsthetic shows my life; So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife With the strong stupor that I heave and choke And sicken at, it is so foully sweet. Faces look strange from space—and disappear. Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear— And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet: All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly Time and the place glimpse on to me again; And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty, I wake—relapsing—somewhat faint and fain, To an immense, complacent dreamery.
p. 10VII VIGIL
Lived on one’s back, In the long hours of repose, Life is a practical nightmare— Hideous asleep or awake.
Shoulders and loins Ache - - - ! Ache, and the mattress, Run into boulders and hummocks, Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes— Tumbling, importunate, daft— Ramble and roll, and the gas, Screwed to its lowermost, An inevitable atom of light, Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper Snores me to hate and despair.
All the old time Surges malignant before me; p. 11Old voices, old kisses, old songs Blossom derisive about me; While the new days Pass me in endless procession: A pageant of shadows Silently, leeringly wending On . . . and still on . . . still on!
Far in the stillness a cat Languishes loudly. A cinder Falls, and the shadows Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me Turns with a moan; and the snorer, The drug like a rope at his throat, Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse, Noiseless and strange, Her bull’s eye half-lanterned in apron, (Whispering me, ‘Are ye no sleepin’ yet?’), Passes, list-slippered and peering, Round . . . and is gone.
Sleep comes at last— Sleep full of dreams and misgivings— p. 12Broken with brutal and sordid Voices and sounds that impose on me, Ere I can wake to it, The unnatural, intolerable day.
p. 13VIII STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE
The greater masters of the commonplace, Rembrandt and good Sir Walter—only these Could paint her all to you: experienced ease And antique liveliness and ponderous grace; The sweet old roses of her sunken face; The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes; The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies; The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace. These thirty years has she been nursing here, Some of them under Syme, her hero still. Much is she worth, and even more is made of her. Patients and students hold her very dear. The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill. They say ‘The Chief’ himself is half-afraid of her.
p. 14IX LADY-PROBATIONER
Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years; A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin; Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin, Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears; A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand, Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring; A bashful air, becoming everything; A well-bred silence always at command. Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain Look out of place on her, and I remain Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery. Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch . . . ‘Do you like nursing?’ ‘Yes, Sir, very much.’ Somehow, I rather think she has a history.
p. 15X STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE
Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast Into the sere of virginal decay, I view her as she enters, day by day, As a sweet sunset almost overpast. Kindly and calm, patrician to the last, Superbly falls her gown of sober gray, And on her chignon’s elegant array The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste. She talks Beethoven; frowns disapprobation At Balzac’s name, sighs it at ‘poor George Sand’s’; Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands; Speaks Latin with a right accentuation; And gives at need (as one who understands) Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.
p. 16XI CLINICAL
Hist? . . . Through the corridor’s echoes, Louder and nearer Comes a great shuffling of feet. Quick, every one of you, Strighten your quilts, and be decent! Here’s the Professor.
In he comes first With the bright look we know, From the broad, white brows the kind eyes Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow, White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse, Towel on arm and her inkstand Fretful with quills. Here in the ruck, anyhow, p. 17Surging along, Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs— Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles— Hustles the Class! And they ring themselves Round the first bed, where the Chief (His dressers and clerks at attention), Bends in inspection already.
So shows the ring Seen from behind round a conjurer Doing his pitch in the street. High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the Master Breaks from the crowd, and goes, Wiping his hands, p. 18To the next bed, with his pupils Flocking and whispering behind him.
Now one can see. Case Number One Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes Stripped up, and showing his foot (Alas for God’s Image!) Swaddled in wet, white lint Brilliantly hideous with red.
p. 19XII ETCHING
Two and thirty is the ploughman. He’s a man of gallant inches, And his hair is close and curly, And his beard; But his face is wan and sunken, And his eyes are large and brilliant, And his shoulder-blades are sharp, And his knees.
He is weak of wits, religious, Full of sentiment and yearning, Gentle, faded—with a cough And a snore. When his wife (who was a widow, And is many years his elder) Fails to write, and that is always, He desponds.
p. 20Let his melancholy wander, And he’ll tell you pretty stories Of the women that have wooed him Long ago; Or he’ll sing of bonnie lasses Keeping sheep among the heather, With a crackling, hackling click In his voice.
p. 21XIII CASUALTY
As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: You could see his hurts were spinal.
He had fallen from an engine, And been dragged along the metals. It was hopeless, and they knew it; So they covered him, and left him.
As he lay, by fits half sentient, Inarticulately moaning, With his stockinged soles protruded Stark and awkward from the blankets,
To his bed there came a woman, Stood and looked and sighed a little, And departed without speaking, As himself a few hours after.
p. 22I was told it was his sweetheart. They were on the eve of marriage. She was quiet as a statue, But her lip was grey and writhen.
p. 23XIV AVE CAESER!
From the winter’s grey despair, From the summer’s golden languor, Death, the lover of Life, Frees us for ever.
Inevitable, silent, unseen, Everywhere always, Shadow by night and as light in the day, Signs she at last to her chosen; And, as she waves them forth, Sorrow and Joy Lay by their looks and their voices, Set down their hopes, and are made One in the dim Forever.
Into the winter’s grey delight, Into the summer’s golden dream, Holy and high and impartial, Death, the mother of Life, Mingles all men for ever.
p. 24XV ‘THE CHIEF’
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— His face at once benign and proud and shy. If envy scout, if ignorance deny, His faultless patience, his unyielding will, Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill, Innumerable gratitudes reply. His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, And seems in all his patients to compel Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. We hold him for another Herakles, Battling with custom, prejudice, disease, As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell.
p. 25XVI HOUSE-SURGEON
Exceeding tall, but built so well his height Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb; Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim; Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted; always bright And always punctual—morning, noon, and night; Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn; Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim; Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight. His piety, though fresh and true in strain, Has not yet whitewashed up his common mood To the dead blank of his particular Schism. Sweet, unaggressive, tolerant, most humane, Wild artists like his kindly elderhood, And cultivate his mild Philistinism.
p. 26XVII INTERLUDE
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, Stout but sportive) treads a measure, Grinning, in herself a ballet, Fixed as fate upon her audience.
Stumps are shaking, crutch-supported; Splinted fingers tap the rhythm; And a head all helmed with plasters Wags a measured approbation.
Of their mattress-life oblivious, All the patients, brisk and cheerful, Are encouraging the dancer, And applauding the musician.
p. 27Dim the gas-lights in the output Of so many ardent smokers, Full of shadow lurch the corners, And the doctor peeps and passes.
There are, maybe, some suspicions Of an alcoholic presence . . . ‘Tak’ a sup of this, my wumman!’ . . . New Year comes but once a twelvemonth.
p. 28XVIII CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD
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