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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
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William Ernest Henley
Age: 53 †
Born: 1849
Born: August 23
Died: 1903
Died: July 11
Editor
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
W. E. Henley
Halls
Whisk
Thin
Figment
Vast
Figments
Vain
Flickering
Smoke
Huts
Wind
Curls
Skein
Ends
Winds
Whirls
Life
Hall
Inane
More quotes by William Ernest Henley
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.
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
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
It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.
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. (Between the Dusk of a Summer Night, 13-16)
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
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
Life - life - let there be life!
William Ernest Henley
So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.
William Ernest Henley
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.
William Ernest Henley
Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.
William Ernest Henley
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!
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
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
There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.
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
Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife.... The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.... [F]ace to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. ...I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady!
William Ernest Henley
Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides.
William Ernest Henley
And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.
William Ernest Henley
Who but knows How it goes! Life's a last year's Nightingale, Love's a last year's rose.
William Ernest Henley
