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164 0 / MICHAEL FIELD
Poets and lovers evermore, To laugh and dream on Lethe's2 shore, To sing to Charon3 in his boat, Heartening the timid souls afloat;
10 Of judgment never to take heed, But to those fast-locked souls to speed, Who never from Apollo4 fled, Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually 15 With them to dwell, Indifferent to heaven and hell.
1893
To Christina Rossetti
Lady, we would behold thee moving bright As Beatrice or Matilda1 mid the trees, Alas! thy moan was as a moan for ease And passage through cool shadows to the night:
5 Fleeing from love, hadst thou not poet's right To slip into the universe? The seas Are fathomless to rivers drowned in these, And sorrow is secure in leafy light. Ah, had this secret touched thee, in a tomb
io Thou hadst not buried thy enchanting self, As happy Syrinx2 murmuring with the wind, Or Daphne,3 thrilled through all her mystic bloom, From safe recess as genius4 or as elf, Thou hadst breathed joy in earth and in thy kind.
1896
Nests in Elms
The rooks are cawing up and down the trees! Among their nests they caw. O sound I treasure, Ripe as old music is, the summer's measure, Sleep at her gossip, sylvan mysteries,
5 With prate and clamour to give zest of these? In rune I trace the ancient law of pleasure,
2. The river of forgetfulness in the underworld (a top of the mountain of Purgaton1. reference, like those that follow, to classical 2. A nymph who, when pursued by Pan, prayed to mythology). the river nymphs to save her: she was transformed 3. The ferryman who rows the dead across the into reeds, from which Pan made his flute (in river Styx to the underworld. Greek, syrinx literally means 'Panpipe'). 4. God of poetry and of the sun. 3. A nymph who, to escape Apollo's pursuit, was 1. An idealized virgin in Dante's Purgatorio (28. transformed into a laurel tree (the literal meaning 30), who explains to the poet that he is in the Gar-of daphne in Greek). den of Eden. Beatrice, Dante's idealized beloved, 4. The spirit of a place. appears to the poet in the Earthly Paradise at the
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WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY / 1641
Of love, of all the busy-ness of leisure, With dream on dream of never-thwarted ease. O homely birds, whose cry is harbinger
10 Of nothing sad, who know not anything Of sea-birds' loneliness, of Procne's1 strife, Rock round me when I die! So sweet it were To die by open doors, with you on wing Humming the deep security of life.
1908
Eros1
O Eros of the mountains, of the earth, One thing I know of thee that thou art old, Far, sovereign, lonesome tyrant of the dearth Of chaos, ruler of the primal cold!
5 None gave thee nurture: chaos' icy rings Pressed on thy plenitude. O fostering power, Thine the first voice, first warmth, first golden wings, First blowing zephyr, earliest opened flower, Thine the first smile of Time: thou hast no mate,
io Thou art alone forever, giving all: After thine image, Love, thou did'st create Man to be poor, man to be prodigal; And thus, O awful0 god, he is endued awe-inspiring With the raw hungers of thy solitude.
1908
1. In Greek mythology Procne's husband, King fled Tereus, all three were changed into birds: Tereus, raped her sister, Philomela. Tereus then Tereus, into a hoopoe; Procne, a nightingale; and ripped out Philomela's tongue to keep her from Philomela, a swallow. revealing the crime, but she wove the story into a 1. Love (Greek); in Greek mythology the god of tapestry. In revenge Procne killed their son and love. served him to Tereus in a stew. When the sisters WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY 1849-1903
During the 1880s and 1890s William Ernest Henley edited the National Observer and other periodicals in London, where he became a powerful figure in literary circles. The affectionate regard in which he was held by his contemporaries was enhanced by his courageously confronting long years of crippling physical pain caused by tuberculosis of the bone. William Butler Yeats said of him: 'I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words.'
Most of Henley's poems, such as his vivid accounts of his hospital experiences, are realistic sketches of city life, often in free verse. Also characteristic, but in a different vein, are his hearty affirmations of faith in the indomitable human spirit, as in 'Invictus' (1888), and his patriotic verses expressing his pride in England's imperial role
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1642 / WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
and her shouldering the responsibility for a world order. In 'Pro Rege Nostro' (Latin for 'For Our Kingdom'; 1892) he writes
They call you proud and hard, England, my England: You with worlds to watch and ward, England, my own! You whose mailed hand keeps the keys Of such teeming destinies You could know nor dread nor ease Were the Song on your bugles blown, England Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
The spirit in poems such as these links Henley's writings to those of his friend Rudyard Kipling, and is also to be found throughout a highly influential anthology that Henley edited for use in schools. First published in 1892 and
