Poetry
This week: William Ernest Henley Edited by: Stormy Lady More Newsletters By This Editor
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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The Rain and the Wind
by William Ernest Henley
The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain --
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.
What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?
Ever the rain -- the rain and the wind!
Come, hunch with me over the fire,
Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned,
Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned,
And the death came on desire!
William Ernest Henley was born on August 23, 1849. Henley attended Crypt Grammar School as a child. At twelve years old Henley suffered from tuberculosis of the bone. This did not stop him from living his life and continuing his schooling. He enrolled in Oxford but found himself hospitalized instead for going to the university. From his hospital bed he sent poems to the Cornhill Magazine.
Henley's condition got so bad that the doctors had to amputate his leg below the knee. After the success of the first surgery doctors told him that they would have to remove the other leg also, to save his life. Henley refused and searched for other answers. After a few new surgeries Henley was allowed to leave the hospital still having his one leg and he continued living his life for almost thirty more years.
One year after leaving the hospital Henley moved to London. He became an editor for London. This journal was the start of The New Arabian Nights of Stevenson, which Henley himself added to. Henley spent ten years there and when the journal folded he went to work as an editor for the Magazine of Art. It wasn't until 1887 that Henley poems caught the attention of a publishing firm and they published A Book of Verse, for him. Over the next three years two more volumes of his poems were published.
Henley published most of is work in his later years. In 1890, he published Views and Reviews.Two years later in 1892 he published The Song of the Sword a book for poems named after one of the first poems he wrote. In 1900 he published For England's Sake. During this time he also published three plays cowritten with Robert Louis Stevenson, Beau Austin, Deacon Brodie and Admiral Guinea.
On July 11, 1903, at the age of 53, Willaim Ernest Henley died. He is buried in a churchyard in the small village of Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire.
Ballade of Dead Actors
by William Ernest Henley
Where are the passions they essayed,
And where the tears they made to flow?
Where the wild humours they portrayed
For laughing worlds to see and know?
Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe?
Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall?
And Millamant and Romeo?
Into the night go one and all.
Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed?
The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe?
The cloth of gold, the rare brocade,
The mantles glittering to and fro?
The pomp, the pride, the royal show?
The cries of war and festival?
The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow?
Into the night go one and all.
The curtain falls, the play is played:
The Beggar packs beside the Beau;
The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid;
The Thunder huddles with the Snow.
Where are the revellers high and low?
The clashing swords? The lover's call?
The dancers gleaming row on row?
Into the night go one and all.
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
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.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
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.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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Tribute to Life
Rolling hills of sweet lavender,
dance with the grey mists,
on the magnificent cliffs of Dover,
their startling white appearing
silver through the surrounding haze.
A hill guards an ancient, sacred ground,
where buried lads have gone on adventure
to the magical land of dragons and fairies,
while a solitary, archaic willow tree
weeps for those lost so young.
The proverbial sands of time
will never stand still for anyone,
instead of grief, we celebrate them and life,
raising toasts with yards of crisp Guinness,
and dancing joyful jigs to the fiddler’s music.
Honorable mention:
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