A. E. Housman
A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman, usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside. Their beauty, simplicity and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers both before and after the First World War. Through...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 March 1859
Here of a Sunday morning / My love and I would lie, / And see the coloured counties, / And hear the larks so high / About us in the sky.
Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.
The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers' meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.
You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
Oh when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I'll be there.
A neck God made for other use / Than strangling in a string.
Ensanguining the skies, How heavily it dies, Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound, Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground, Falls the remorseful day
Little is the luck I've had, And oh, 'tis comfort small - To think that many another lad - Has had no luck at all
From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I
No change, though you lie under / The land you used to plough.
May will be fine next year as like as not: / Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.