A E Housman- Collected Poetical Works Read online

  A. E. Housman

  (1859-1936)

  Contents

  The Poetry Collections

  A SHROPSHIRE LAD

  LAST POEMS

  MORE POEMS

  ADDITIONAL POEMS

  NOTEBOOK FRAGMENTS

  TRANSLATIONS

  COMIC VERSE

  UNCOLLECTED POEMS

  The Poems

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Essays

  SWINBURNE

  THE NAME AND NATURE OF POETRY

  THE APPLICATION OF THOUGHT TO TEXTUAL CRITICISM

  A. E. HOUSMAN’S ‘DE AMICITIA’ by Laurence Housman

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2013

  Version 1

  A. E. Housman

  By Delphi Classics, 2013

  COPYRIGHT

  A. E. Housman - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2013.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  The Poetry Collections

  A. E. Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire.

  Although Housman was born in Valley House, he moved at the age of three months to Perry Hall in the nearby town of Bromsgrove, where his father already had his solicitor’s chambers. Thus, Perry Hall was to become his childhood home.

  A plaque commemorating the poet’s residence at Perry Hall

  A SHROPSHIRE LAD

  A. E. Housman was born in Fockbury, on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, on 26th March 1859. Tragically, his mother died on his twelfth birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, later married an elder cousin in 1873. Housman was educated first at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his earliest attempts in poetry. In 1877, he won an open scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, where he went on to study the classics.

  Although by nature reserved, perhaps in part due to his homosexuality, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, A. W. Pollard and Moses Jackson, the latter becoming the great love of Housman’s life, though Jackson did not return these feelings. Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, but his immersion in textual analysis, particularly with Propertius, led him to neglect ancient history and philosophy, which formed part of the Greats curriculum, resulting in him failing to obtain a degree. This failure left him with a deep sense of humiliation and a determination to prove his genius.

  After Oxford, Jackson found a position as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a similar post for Housman. They shared a flat with Jackson’s brother Adalbert until 1885, when Housman moved to lodgings of his own. Jackson moved to India in 1887 and when he returned briefly to England in 1889 to marry, Housman was not invited to the wedding and knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country.

  In the meantime, Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on authors such as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted. The position at once offered Housman independent financial stability for the first time in his career.

  During his years in London, Housman completed what become known as his most famous collection of verses, A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems. After several publishers had turned it down, he published the collection at his own expense in 1896. The volume surprised both his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Housman’s nostalgic depiction of rural life and the young men’s early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity. Arthur Somervell and other composers were inspired by the folksong-like simplicity of the poems and famous musical settings were composed by George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran.

  Housman was surprised by the success of the collection due to the deep pessimism and obsession with death he conveys throughout the poems, with no regard given to the consolation of religion. Set in a half-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, “the land of lost content”, the poems explore the fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style that many critics of the time found outdated as compared to the exuberance of some Romantic poets. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border ballads and the German Heinrich Heine, but the poet specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his work.

  The main theme of A Shropshire Lad is mortality and the living of life to its fullest, as death can strike at any time, a theme echoed from Horace’s famous Ode ‘Carpe diem’ which the great classicist would have been more than familiar with. For example, in poem number IV, titled Reveille, the poet urges an unnamed lad to stop sleeping in the daylight, for ‘When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.’

  The collection is composed around a series of recurrent themes. It is not a connected narrative, though it can be read as the allegorical narrative of a journey of the heart. The ‘I’ of the poems, the authorial person, is in two cases named as Terence (VIII, LXII), the ‘Shropshire Lad’ of the title. However, the poems are not necessarily all in the same voice and the narrative suggested by the sequence of poems is a general framework, rather than a closely defined linear order.

  Moses Jackson, (1858-1923)

  Housman as a young man

  CONTENTS

  I.

  From Clee to heaven the beacon burns

  II.

  Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

  III.

  Leave your home behind, lad

  IV.

  Wake: the silver dusk returning

  V.

  Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers

  VI.

  When the lad for longing sighs

  VII.

  When smoke stood up from Ludlow

  VIII.

  Farewell to barn and stack and tree

  IX.

  On moonlit heath and lonesome bank

  X.

  The Sun at noon to higher air

  XI.

  On your midnight pallet lying

  XII.

  When I watch the living meet

  XIII.

  When I was one-and-twenty

  XIV.

  There pass the careless people

  XV.

  Look not in my eyes, for fear

  XVI.

  It nods and curtseys and recovers

  XVII.

  Twice a week the winter thorough

  XVIII.

  Oh, when I was in love with you

  XIX.

 
The time you won your town the race

  XX.

  Oh fair enough are sky and plain

  XXI.

  In summertime on Bredon

  XXII.

  The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread

  XXIII.

  The lads in their hundreds

  XXIV.

  Say, lad, have you things to do

  XXV.

  This time of year a twelvemonth past

  XXVI.

  Along the field as we came by

  XXVII.

  Is my team ploughing

  XXVIII.

  High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam

  XXIX.

  ’Tis spring; come out to ramble

  XXX.

  Others, I am not the first

  XXXI.

  On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble

  XXXII.

  From far, from eve and morning

  XXXIII.

  If truth in hearts that perish

  XXXIV.

  Oh, sick I am to see you

  XXXV.

  On the idle hill of summer

  XXXVI.

  White in the moon the long road lies

  XXXVII.

  As through the wild green hills of Wyre

  XXXVIII.

  The winds out of the west land blow

  XXXIX.

  ’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town

  XL.

  Into my heart on air that kills

  XLI.

  In my own shire, if I was sad

  XLII.

  Once in the wind of morning

  XLIII.

  When I meet the morning beam

  XLIV.

  Shot? so quick, so clean an ending

  XLV.

  If it chance your eye offend you

  XLVI.

  Bring, in this timeless grave to throw

  XLVII.

  Here the hangman stops his cart

  XLVIII.

  Be still, my soul, be still

  XLIX.

  Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly

  L.

  In valleys of springs of rivers

  LI.

  Loitering with a vacant eye

  LII.

  Far in a western brookland

  LIII.

  The lad came to the door at night

  LIV.

  With rue my heart is laden

  LV.

  Westward on the high-hilled plains

  LVI.

  Far I hear the bugle blow

  LVII.

  You smile upon your friend to-day

  LVIII.

  When I came last to Ludlow

  LIX.

  The star-filled seas are smooth to-night

  LX.

  Now hollow fires burn out to black

  LXI.

  The vane on Hughley steeple

  LXII.

  Terence, this is stupid stuff

  LXIII.

  I hoed and trenched and weeded

  The first edition

  The original title page

  Housman had been educated by governesses at home until the age of eleven, when he entered the Bromsgrove School.

  I.

  From Clee to heaven the beacon burns

  1887

  FROM Clee to heaven the beacon burns,

  The shires have seen it plain,

  From north and south the sign returns

  And beacons burn again.

  Look left, look right, the hills are bright, 5

  The dales are light between,

  Because ’tis fifty years to-night

  That God has saved the Queen.

  Now, when the flame they watch not towers

  About the soil they trod, 10

  Lads, we ‘ll remember friends of ours

  Who shared the work with God.

  To skies that knit their heartstrings right,

  To fields that bred them brave,

  The saviours come not home to-night 15

  Themselves they could not save.

  It dawns in Asia, tombstones show

  And Shropshire names are read;

  And the Nile spills his overflow

  Beside the Severn’s dead. 20

  We pledge in peace by farm and town

  The Queen they served in war,

  And fire the beacons up and down

  The land they perished for.

  ‘God save the Queen’ we living sing, 25

  From height to height ’tis heard;

  And with the rest your voices ring,

  Lads of the Fifty-third.

  Oh, God will save her, fear you not:

  Be you the men you ‘ve been, 30

  Get you the sons your fathers got,

  And God will save the Queen.

  II.

  Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

  LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now

  Is hung with bloom along the bough,

  And stands about the woodland ride

  Wearing white for Eastertide.

  Now, of my threescore years and ten, 5

  Twenty will not come again,

  And take from seventy springs a score,

  It only leaves me fifty more.

  And since to look at things in bloom

  Fifty springs are little room, 10

  About the woodlands I will go

  To see the cherry hung with snow.

  III.

  Leave your home behind, lad

  The Recruit

  LEAVE your home behind, lad,

  And reach your friends your hand,

  And go, and luck go with you

  While Ludlow tower shall stand.

  Oh, come you home of Sunday 5

  When Ludlow streets are still

  And Ludlow bells are calling

  To farm and lane and mill,

  Or come you home of Monday

  When Ludlow market hums 10

  And Ludlow chimes are playing

  ‘The conquering hero comes,’

  Come you home a hero,

  Or come not home at all,

  The lads you leave will mind you 15

  Till Ludlow tower shall fall.

  And you will list the bugle

  That blows in lands of morn,

  And make the foes of England

  Be sorry you were born. 20

  And you till trump of doomsday

  On lands of morn may lie,

  And make the hearts of comrades

  Be heavy where you die.

  Leave your home behind you, 25

  Your friends by field and town:

  Oh, town and field will mind you

  Till Ludlow tower is down.

  IV.

  Wake: the silver dusk returning

  Reveille

  WAKE: the silver dusk returning

  Up the beach of darkness brims,

  And the ship of sunrise burning

  Strands upon the eastern rims.

  Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters, 5

  Trampled to the floor it spanned,

  And the tent of night in tatters

  Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

  Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying:

  Hear the drums of morning play; 10

  Hark, the empty highways crying

  ‘Who ‘ll beyond the hills away?’

  Towns and countries woo together,

  Forelands beacon, belfries call;

  Never lad that trod on leather 15

  Lived to feast his heart with all.

  Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

  Sunlit pallets never thrive;

  Morns abed and daylight slumber

  Were not meant for man alive. 20

  Clay lies still, but blood ‘s a rover;

  Breath ‘s a ware that will not keep.

  Up, lad: when the journey ‘s over

  There ‘ll be time enough to sleep.

  V.

  Oh see how thick the g
oldcup flowers

  OH see how thick the goldcup flowers

  Are lying in field and lane,

  With dandelions to tell the hours

  That never are told again.

  Oh may I squire you round the meads 5

  And pick you posies gay?

  — ‘Twill do no harm to take my arm.

  ‘You may, young man, you may.’

  Ah, spring was sent for lass and lad,

  ’Tis now the blood runs gold, 10

  And man and maid had best be glad

  Before the world is old.

  What flowers to-day may flower to-morrow,

  But never as good as new.

  — Suppose I wound my arm right round — 15

  ‘’Tis true, young man, ’tis true.’

  Some lads there are, ’tis shame to say,

  That only court to thieve,

  And once they bear the bloom away

  ’Tis little enough they leave. 20

  Then keep your heart for men like me

  And safe from trustless chaps.

  My love is true and all for you.

  ‘Perhaps, young man, perhaps.’

  Oh, look in my eyes then, can you doubt? 25

  — Why, ’tis a mile from town.

  How green the grass is all about!

  We might as well sit down.

  — Ah, life, what is it but a flower?

  Why must true lovers sigh? 30

  Be kind, have pity, my own, my pretty, —

  ‘Good-bye, young man, good-bye.’