Poems

Transcribed from the 1907 David Nutt edition by Diarmuid Pigott with some additional material and proofing by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
By
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet , Though to itself it only live and die . SHAKESPEARE
Tenth Impression
LONDON Published by DAVID NUTT at the Sign of the Phœnix in Long Acre 1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
Take , dear , my little sheaf of songs , For , old or new , All that is good in them belongs Only to you ;
And , singing as when all was young , They will recall Those others , lived but left unsung — The bent of all .
W. E. H
April 1888 September 1897.
My friend and publisher , Mr. Alfred Nutt , asks me to introduce this re-issue of old work in a new shape . At his request , then , I have to say that nearly all the numbers contained in the present volume are reprinted from ‘ A Book of Verses ’ (1888) and ‘ London Voluntaries ’ (1892–3). From the first of these I have removed some copies of verse which seemed to me scarce worth keeping ; and I have recovered for it certain others from those publications which had made room for them . I have corrected where I could , added such dates as I might , and , by re-arrangement and revision , done my best to give my book , such as it is , its final form . If any be displeased by the result , I can but submit that my verses are my own , and that this is how I would have them read .