William Ernest Henley Quotes (29 quotes)

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Invictus

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley: 29 quotes 1 like

Famous William Ernest Henley Quotes

“Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.”

William Ernest Henley

"Hugo"
Views and Reviews (1889)

“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 shadows
And wet with the dews of night.”

William Ernest Henley

"Envoy"
Poems (1898)

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

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XXV

“Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 4

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

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XII

“p>Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message: —
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.”

William Ernest Henley

</p>
Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XIV

William Ernest Henley Quotes about life

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

William Ernest Henley

Source: Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XI

“From the winter’s gray despair,
From the summer’s golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 20

“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.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XXI
Context: 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.
So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
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.

“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
And wild waste places of the world!”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XVI

“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,
The immortal, incommunicable dream.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XVI

“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,
What should it cost us to forgive
Whose daily task is to forget?”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XV

William Ernest Henley Quotes

“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,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes, whereat the weak
Live not. But only the strong
Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve.”

William Ernest Henley

Epilogue
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)
Context: A people, haggard with defeat,
Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth,
Faces calamity, and goes into the fire
Another than it was. And in wild hours
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,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes, whereat the weak
Live not. But only the strong
Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve.

People , Dreams , Soul , Strong

“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.”

William Ernest Henley

Love

“Those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more — no more.”

William Ernest Henley

"Prologue"
Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms
Context: p>Those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more — no more.Something is dead...
'Tis time to creep in close about the fire
And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice
In the young life that round us leaps and laughs,
A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride
Of God's best gift that to us twain returns,
Dear Heart, no more — no more.</p

Spring , Heart

“Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

William Ernest Henley book Invictus

Invictus (1875)
Context: In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Chance

“Arise! no more a living lie,
And with me quicken and control
Some memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XII
Context: p>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
The universal Soul.</p

Lie , Soul , Universe , Memory

“Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.”

William Ernest Henley book Invictus

Invictus (1875)

Tear

“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
Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring
Falls on the World, and there is no more pain.”

William Ernest Henley

Epilogue
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)

Pain , World , Peace , Angels

“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?”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, III

Star

“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.”

William Ernest Henley

Epilogue
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)

Love , Money , World , Dreams

“Far in the stillness a cat
Languishes loudly. A cinder
Falls, and the shadows
Lurch to the leap of the flame.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 11

Cats

“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.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, II

God , Law , Drawing

“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, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, II

Men , Peace , Fight

“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.”

William Ernest Henley

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XV

Death , Truth , Reading , Dead

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”

William Ernest Henley book Invictus

This may have inspired later lines of "A Challenge" from "Quatrains" by James Benjamin Kenyon, published in An American Anthology, 1787-1900 (1901) edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman:
Arise, O Soul, and gird thee up anew,
Though the black camel Death kneel at thy gate;
No beggar thou that thou for alms shouldst sue:
Be the proud captain still of thine own fate.
Invictus (1875)

Fate , Soul

“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.”

William Ernest Henley book Invictus

Invictus (1875)

God , Soul , Night

“Friends . . old friends. . .
So it breaks, so it ends.
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,
Which shall be more
As he was before?
What is it ends
With friends?”

William Ernest Henley

A Book of Verses (1888)