William Ernest Henley on Life
1849–1903 England
← All quotes by William Ernest Henley
6 quotes
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.'
Poems (1898)
Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing
This side of death,
Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)
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!
Poems (1898)
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.
Poems (1898)
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.
Who but knows
How it goes!
Life's a last year's Nightingale,
Love's a last year's rose.