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Quotes from A Book of Verses — William Ernest Henley

1849–1903 England

← All quotes by William Ernest Henley

13 quotes

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

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.

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

I captain an army
Of shining and generous dreams.

A Book of Verses (1888)

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.

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn.

A Book of Verses (1888)

Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter-Catechist.

A Book of Verses (1888)

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

A Book of Verses (1888)

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.

A Book of Verses (1888)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Ernest Henley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.