William Ernest Henley was born in 1849 and was educated at the Grammar School of Gloucester. From childhood he was afflicted with a tuberculous disease which finally necessitated the amputation of a foot. His _Hospital Verses_, those vivid precursors of current free verse, were a record of the time when he was at the infirmary at Edinburgh; they are sharp with the sights, sensations, even the actual smells of the sickroom. In spite (or, more probably, because) of his continued poor health, Henley never ceased to worship strength and energy; courage and a triumphant belief in a harsh world shine out of the athletic _London Voluntaries_ (1892) and the lightest and most musical lyrics in _Hawthorn and Lavender_ (1898). The bulk of Henley's poetry is not great in volume. He has himself explained the small quantity of his work in a Preface to his _Poems_, first published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1898. "A principal reason," he says, "is that, after spending the better part of my life in the pursuit of poetry, I found myself (about 1877) so utterly unmarketable that I had to own myself beaten in art, and to indict myself to journalism for the next ten years." Later on, he began to write again--"old dusty sheaves were dragged to light; the work of selection and correction was begun; I burned much; I found that, after all, the lyrical instinct had slept--not died." After a brilliant and varied career (see Preface), devoted mostly to journalism, Henley died in 1903. INVICTUS 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. THE BLACKBIRD The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all of the joy of life, And we in the mad, spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together. A BOWL OF ROSES It was a bowl of roses: There in the light they lay, Languishing, glorying, glowing Their life away. And the soul of them rose like a presence, Into me crept and grew, And filled me with something--some one-- O, was it you? BEFORE