William Ernest Henley Short Quotes

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Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.

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

William Ernest Henley
Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.

William Ernest Henley
Here is the ghost
Of a summer that lived for us,
Ere is a promise
Of summer to be.

William Ernest Henley
And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.

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

William Ernest Henley
This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

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

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

William Ernest Henley
From the winter's gray despair,
From the summer's golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.

William Ernest Henley
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.

William Ernest Henley
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
Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian Slave.

William Ernest Henley
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
Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.

William Ernest Henley
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
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
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
What Nature has writ with her lusty wit Is worded so wisely and kindly That whoever has dipped in her manuscript Must up and follow her blindly.

William Ernest Henley
Into the winter's gray delight, Into the summer's golden dream, Holy and high and impartial, Death, the mother of Life, Mingles all men for ever.

William Ernest Henley
O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one.

William Ernest Henley
Life is a smoke that curls-
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls,
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast inane.
One end for hut and hall.

William Ernest Henley
So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

William Ernest Henley
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