Читать книгу Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections) - Amelia Carruthers - Страница 26
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From the winter's grey despair,From the summer's golden languor,Death, the lover of Life,Frees us for ever.
Inevitable, silent, unseen,Everywhere always,Shadow by night and as light in the day,Signs she at last to her chosen;And, as she waves them forth,Sorrow and JoyLay by their looks and their voices,Set down their hopes, and are madeOne in the dim Forever.
Into the winter's gray delight,Into the summer's golden dream,Holy and high and impartial,Death, the mother of Life,Mingles all men for ever.
– William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1903), a British poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem 'Invictus'. These lines come from In Hospital ('XIV: Ave, Caesar'), a collection of poems written during Henley's many and lengthy stays in the infirmary. His left leg had been amputated at the age of nineteen, and during the three years that he was in hospital, penning these works (1873 - 75), he successfully avoided having his right leg amputated as well.
