Complete Poetical Works of a E Housman
Page 1
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.
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NOTE
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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.
&nb
sp; 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 t
he goldcup 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.’