Till, through its jocund loveliness of length
A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,
A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,
It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,
Some vision multitudinous and agleam,
Of happiness as it shall be evermore!
The spectacle of life produced in Henley an almost exclusively physical excitement. He did not wish to see things transfigured by the light that never was on sea or land. He preferred the light on the wheels of a hansom cab or, at best, the light that falls on the Thames as it flows through London. His attitude to life, in other words, was sensual. He could escape out of circumstances into the sensual enchantments of the Arabian Nights, but there was no escape for him, as there is for the great poets, into the general universe of the imagination. This physical obsession may be put down in a measure to his long years of ill-health and struggle. But even a healthy and prosperous Henley, I fancy, would have been restless, dissatisfied, embittered. For him most seas were Dead Seas, and most shores were desolate. The sensualist’s “Dust and Ashes!” breaks in, not always mournfully, but at times angrily, upon the high noon of his raptures. He longs for death as few poets have longed:
Of art and drink I have had my fill,
he declares, and the conclusion of the whole matter is:
For the end I know is the best of all.