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
In my fourteenth year I had gone up to London for the first time, to see as many of the sights as could be got into a fortnight.
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
A neck God made for other use / Than strangling in a string.
Think no more; 'tis only thinking / Lays lads underground.
And then the clock collected in the tower / Its strength and struck.
May will be fine next year as like as not: / Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
No change, though you lie under / The land you used to plough.
Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.
And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.
White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.
Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.