Ballade Made In The Hot Weather - To C. M.

Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
The moss they overspill;
Pools that the breezes crinkle;
The wheel beside the mill,
With its wet, weedy frill;
Wind-shadows in the wheat;
A water-cart in the street;
The fringe of foam that girds
An islet's ferneries;
A green sky's minor thirds -
To live, I think of these!

Of ice and glass the tinkle,
Pellucid, silver-shrill;
Peaches without a wrinkle;
Cherries and snow at will,
From china bowls that fill
The senses with a sweet
Incuriousness of heat;
A melon's dripping sherds;
Cream-clotted strawberries;
Dusk dairies set with curds -
To live, I think of these!

Vale-lily and periwinkle;
Wet stone-crop on the sill;
The look of leaves a-twinkle
With windlets clear and still;
The feel of a forest rill
That wimples fresh and fleet
About one's naked feet;
The muzzles of drinking herds;
Lush flags and bulrushes;
The chirp of rain-bound birds -
To live, I think of these!

Envoy

Dark aisles, new packs of cards,
Mermaidens' tails, cool swards,
Dawn dews and starlit seas,
White marbles, whiter words -
To live, I think of these!

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic, and editor. Despite battling tuberculosis from a young age, Henley is best known for his resilience and strength, qualities exemplified in his most famous poem, 'Invictus'. Henley was also a notable figure in the literary circles of his time, befriending and influencing key writers, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who modeled the character Long John Silver after him.

William Ernest Henley

London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - IV - Largo E Mesto

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

London Types - II. Life-Guardsman

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

As Like The Woman As You Can

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

I. M. To R. T. Hamilton Bruce (1846-1899)

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

English

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Ballade (Double Refrain) Of Midsummer Days And Nights - To W. H.

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams -
Midsummer days!    Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise -
Midsummer nights!    O midsummer nights!

The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams -
Midsummer days!    Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze -
Midsummer nights!    O midsummer nights!

There's a music of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hov...

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The Ways Are Green

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
Of the young year's fairest daughter.
O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing wheat!
O, the magic of running water!
The spirit of spring is in every thing,
The banners of spring are streaming,
We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
And life's a dream worth dreaming.

It's all very well to sit and spell
At the lesson there's no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
When the whole mad world's a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
And the air's with love-motes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O, life's a dream worth dreaming!

What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Mus...

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London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - II - Andante Con Moto

Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win -
As from swart August to the green lap of May -
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
In any of her innumerable nests
Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),
...

William Ernest Henley

Fragment.

From an epistle written when the thermometer stood at 98 degrees in the shade.



Oh! for the temperate airs that blow
    Upon that darling of the sea,
Where neither sunshine, rain, nor snow,
    For three days hold supremacy;
But ever-varying skies contend
The blessings of all climes to lend,
To make that tiny, wave-rocked isle,
In never-fading beauty smile.
England, oh England! for the breeze
That slowly stirs thy forest-trees!
Thy ferny brooks, thy mossy fountains,
Thy beechen woods, thy heathery mountains,
Thy lawny uplands, where the shadow
    Of many a giant oak is sleeping;
The tangled copse, the sunny meadow,
    Through which the summer rills run weeping.
Oh, land of flowers! while sinking here
    Beneath the dog-star of th...

Frances Anne Kemble

Barnham Water

Fresh from the Hall of Bounty sprung, [1]
With glowing heart and ardent eye,
With song and rhyme upon my tongue,
And fairy visions dancing by,
The mid-day sun in all his pow'r
The backward valley painted gay;
Mine was a road without a flower,
Where one small streamlet cross'd the way.

[Footnote 1: On a sultry afternoon, late in the summer of 1802, Euston-Hall lay in my way to Thetford, which place I did not reach until the evening, on a visit to my sister: the lines lose much of their interest except they could be read on the spot, or at least at a coresponding season of the year.]

What was it rous'd my soul to love?
What made the simple brook so dear?
It glided like the weary dove,
And never brook seem'd half so clear.
Cool pass'd the current o'er my feet,
...

Robert Bloomfield

Comfort Of The Fields

What would'st thou have for easement after grief,
When the rude world hath used thee with despite,
And care sits at thine elbow day and night,
Filching thy pleasures like a subtle thief?
To me, when life besets me in such wise,
'Tis sweetest to break forth, to drop the chain,
And grasp the freedom of this pleasant earth,
To roam in idleness and sober mirth,
Through summer airs and summer lands, and drain
The comfort of wide fields unto tired eyes.

By hills and waters, farms and solitudes,
To wander by the day with wilful feet;
Through fielded valleys wide with yellowing wheat;
Along gray roads that run between deep woods,
Murmurous and cool; through hallowed slopes of pine,
Where the long daylight dreams, unpierced, unstirred,
And only the rich-throated ...

Archibald Lampman