England)

#70 on top 500 poets

''What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?''
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), British poet, critic, editor. England, My England (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.
''For it's home, dearie, home—it's home I want to be.
Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
They're all growing green in the old countrie.''
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), British poet, critic, editor. Falmouth (l. 23-26). . . Modern British Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (7th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.
''O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,
And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,
For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,
And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.''
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), British poet, critic, editor. Falmouth (l. 19-22). . . Modern British Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (7th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.
''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 (1849-1903), British poet, critic, editor. Madam Life's a Piece in Bloom (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of Death, The. D. J. Enright, ed. (1987) Oxford University Press.
''It's up the spout and Charley Wag
With wipes and tickers and what not
Until the squeezer nips your scrag,
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.''
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), British poet, critic, editor. Villon's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves (l. 25-28). . . Faber Book of Comic Verse, The. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith, eds. (Rev. ed., 1974; paperback 1978) Faber and Faber.

William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1902 / Gloucester / England)

Quotations

Ballade of Dead Actors