Complete Poetical Works of a E Housman

by A E Housman

  Hesper loves to lead them home.

  Home return who him behold,

  Child to mother, sheep to fold,

  Bird to nest from wandering wide:

  Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

  Pour it out, the golden cup

  Given and guarded, brimming up,

  Safe through jostling markets borne

  And the thicket of the thorn;

  Folly spurned and danger past,

  Pour it to the god at last.

  Now, to smother noise and light,

  Is stolen abroad the wildering night,

  And the blotting shades confuse

  Path and meadow full of dews;

  And the high heavens, that all control,

  Turn in silence round the pole.

  Catch the starry beams they shed

  Prospering the marriage bed,

  And breed the land that reared your prime

  Sons to stay the rot of time.

  All is quiet, no alarms;

  Nothing fear of nightly harms.

  Safe you sleep on guarded ground,

  And in silent circle round

  The thoughts of friends keep watch and ward,

  Harnessed angels, hand on sword.

  XXV. THE ORACLES

  ’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain

  When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled,

  And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,

  And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.

  I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,

  The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;

  And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking

  That she and I should surely die and never live again.

  Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;

  But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.

  ’Tis true there’s better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;

  And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.

  The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;

  Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.

  And he that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning.

  The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.

  XXVI.

  The half-moon westers low, my love,

  And the wind brings up the rain;

  And wide apart lie we, my love,

  And seas between the twain.

  I know not if it rains, my love,

  In the land where you do lie;

  And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,

  You know no more than I.

  XXVII.

  The sigh that heaves the grasses

  Whence thou wilt never rise

  Is of the air that passes

  And knows not if it sighs.

  The diamond tears adorning

  Thy low mound on the lea,

  Those are the tears of morning,

  That weeps, but not for thee.

  XXVIII.

  Now dreary dawns the eastern light,

  And fall of eve is drear,

  And cold the poor man lies at night,

  And so goes out the year.

  Little is the luck I’ve had,

  And oh, ’tis comfort small

  To think that many another lad

  Has had no luck at all.

  XXIX.

  Wake not for the world-heard thunder

  Nor the chime that earthquakes toll.

  Star may plot in heaven with planet,

  Lightning rive the rock of granite,

  Tempest tread the oakwood under:

  Fear not you for flesh nor soul.

  Marching, fighting, victory past,

  Stretch your limbs in peace at last.

  Stir not for the soldiers drilling

  Nor the fever nothing cures:

  Throb of drum and timbal’s rattle

  Call but man alive to battle,

  And the fife with death-notes filling

  Screams for blood but not for yours.

  Times enough you bled your best;

  Sleep on now, and take your rest.

  Sleep, my lad; the French are landed,

  London’s burning, Windsor’s down;

  Clasp your cloak of earth about you,

  We must man the ditch without you,

  March unled and fight short-handed,

  Charge to fall and swim to drown.

  Duty, friendship, bravery o’er,

  Sleep away, lad; wake no more.

  XXX. SINNER’S RUE

  I walked alone and thinking,

  And faint the nightwind blew

  And stirred on mounds at crossways

  The flower of sinner’s rue.

  Where the roads part they bury

  Him that his own hand slays,

  And so the weed of sorrow

  Springs at the four cross ways.

  By night I plucked it hueless,

  When morning broke ’twas blue:

  Blue at my breast I fastened

  The flower of sinner’s rue.

  It seemed a herb of healing,

  A balsam and a sign,

  Flower of a heart whose trouble

  Must have been worse than mine.

  Dead clay that did me kindness,

  I can do none to you,

  But only wear for breastknot

  The flower of sinner’s rue.

  XXXI. HELL’S GATE

  Onward led the road again

  Through the sad uncoloured plain

  Under twilight brooding dim,

  And along the utmost rim

  Wall and rampart risen to sight

  Cast a shadow not of night,

  And beyond them seemed to glow

  Bonfires lighted long ago.

  And my dark conductor broke

  Silence at my side and spoke,

  Saying, “You conjecture well:

  Yonder is the gate of hell.”

  Ill as yet the eye could see

  The eternal masonry,

  But beneath it on the dark

  To and fro there stirred a spark.

  And again the sombre guide

  Knew my question, and replied:

  ”At hell gate the damned in turn

  Pace for sentinel and burn.”

  Dully at the leaden sky

  Staring, and with idle eye

  Measuring the listless plain,

  I began to think again.

  Many things I thought of then,

  Battle, and the loves of men,

  Cities entered, oceans crossed,

  Knowledge gained and virtue lost,

  Cureless folly done and said,

  And the lovely way that led

  To the slimepit and the mire

  And the everlasting fire.

  And against a smoulder dun

  And a dawn without a sun

  Did the nearing bastion loom,

  And across the gate of gloom

  Still one saw the sentry go,

  Trim and burning, to and fro,

  One for women to admire

  In his finery of fire.

  Something, as I watched him pace,

  Minded me of time and place,

  Soldiers of another corps

  And a sentry known before.

  Ever darker hell on high

  Reared its strength upon the sky,

  And our footfall on the track

  Fetched the daunting echo back.

  But the soldier pacing still

  The insuperable sill,

  Nursing his tormented pride,

  Turned his head to neither side,

  Sunk into himself apart

  And the hell-fire of his heart.r />
  But against our entering in

  From the drawbridge Death and Sin

  Rose to render key and sword

  To their father and their lord.

  And the portress foul to see

  Lifted up her eyes on me

  Smiling, and I made reply:

  ”Met again, my lass,” said I.

  Then the sentry turned his head,

  Looked, and knew me, and was Ned.

  Once he looked, and halted straight,

  Set his back against the gate,

  Caught his musket to his chin,

  While the hive of hell within

  Sent abroad a seething hum

  As of towns whose king is come

  Leading conquest home from far

  And the captives of his war,

  And the car of triumph waits,

  And they open wide the gates.

  But across the entry barred

  Straddled the revolted guard,

  Weaponed and accoutred well

  From the arsenals of hell;

  And beside him, sick and white,

  Sin to left and Death to right

  Turned a countenance of fear

  On the flaming mutineer.

  Over us the darkness bowed,

  And the anger in the cloud

  Clenched the lightning for the stroke;

  But the traitor musket spoke.

  And the hollowness of hell

  Sounded as its master fell,

  And the mourning echo rolled

  Ruin through his kingdom old.

  Tyranny and terror flown

  Left a pair of friends alone,

  And beneath the nether sky

  All that stirred was he and I.

  Silent, nothing found to say,

  We began the backward way;

  And the ebbing luster died

  From the soldier at my side,

  As in all his spruce attire

  Failed the everlasting fire.

  Midmost of the homeward track

  Once we listened and looked back;

  But the city, dusk and mute,

  Slept, and there was no pursuit.

  XXXII.

  When I would muse in boyhood

  The wild green woods among,

  And nurse resolves and fancies

  Because the world was young,

  It was not foes to conquer,

  Nor sweethearts to be kind,

  But it was friends to die for

  That I would seek and find.

  I sought them far and found them,

  The sure, the straight, the brave,

  The hearts I lost my own to,

  The souls I could not save.

  They braced their belts about them,

  They crossed in ships the sea,

  They sought and found six feet of ground,

  And there they died for me.

  XXXIII.

  When the eye of day is shut,

  And the stars deny their beams,

  And about the forest hut

  Blows the roaring wood of dreams,

  From deep clay, from desert rock,

  From the sunk sands of the main,

  Come not at my door to knock,

  Hearts that loved me not again.

  Sleep, be still, turn to your rest

  In the lands where you are laid;

  In far lodgings east and west

  Lie down on the beds you made.

  In gross marl, in blowing dust,

  In the drowned ooze of the sea,

  Where you would not, lie you must,

  Lie you must, and not with me.

  XXXIV. THE FIRST OF MAY

  The orchards half the way

  From home to Ludlow fair

  Flowered on the first of May

  In Mays when I was there;

  And seen from stile or turning

  The plume of smoke would show

  Where fires were burning

  That went out long ago.

  The plum broke forth in green,

  The pear stood high and snowed,

  My friends and I between

  Would take the Ludlow road;

  Dressed to the nines and drinking

  And light in heart and limb,

  And each chap thinking

  The fair was held for him.

  Between the trees in flower

  New friends at fairtime tread

  The way where Ludlow tower

  Stands planted on the dead.

  Our thoughts, a long while after,

  They think, our words they say;

  Theirs now’s the laughter,

  The fair, the first of May.

  Ay, yonder lads are yet

  The fools that we were then;

  For oh, the sons we get

  Are still the sons of men.

  The sumless tale of sorrow

  Is all unrolled in vain:

  May comes to-morrow

  And Ludlow fair again.

  XXXV.

  When first my way to fair I took

  Few pence in purse had I,

  And long I used to stand and look

  At things I could not buy.

  Now times are altered: if I care

  To buy a thing, I can;

  The pence are here and here’s the fair,

  But where’s the lost young man?

  — To think that two and two are four

  And neither five nor three

  The heart of man has long been sore

  And long ’tis like to be.

  XXXVI. REVOLUTION

  West and away the wheels of darkness roll,

  Day’s beamy banner up the east is borne,

  Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,

  Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.

  But over sea and continent from sight

  Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed

  The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,

  Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.

  See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,

  The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.

  ’Tis silent, and the subterranean dark

  Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.

  XXXVII. EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES

  These, in the day when heaven was falling,

  The hour when earth’s foundations fled,

  Followed their mercenary calling

  And took their wages and are dead.

  Their shoulders held the sky suspended;

  They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;

  What God abandoned, these defended,

  And saved the sum of things for pay.

  XXXVIII.

  Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough

  The land and not the sea,

  And leave the soldiers at their drill,

  And all about the idle hill

  Shepherd your sheep with me.

  Oh stay with company and mirth

  And daylight and the air;

  Too full already is the grave

  Of fellows that were good and brave

  And died because they were.

  XXXIX.

  When summer’s end is nighing

  And skies at evening cloud,

  I muse on change and fortune

  And all the feats I vowed

  When I was young and proud.

  The weathercock at sunset

  Would lose the slanted ray,

  And I would climb the beacon

  That looked to Wales away

  And saw the last of day.

  From hill and cloud and heaven

  The hues of evening died;

  Night welled through lane and hollow

  And hushed the countryside,

  But I had youth and pride.

  And I with earth and nightfall

  In converse high would stand,

  Late, till the west was ashen

  And da
rkness hard at hand,

  And the eye lost the land.

  The year might age, and cloudy

  The lessening day might close,

  But air of other summers

  Breathed from beyond the snows,

  And I had hope of those.

  They came and were and are not

  And come no more anew;

  And all the years and seasons

  That ever can ensue

  Must now be worse and few.

  So here’s an end of roaming

  On eves when autumn nighs:

  The ear too fondly listens

  For summer’s parting sighs,

  And then the heart replies.

  XL.

  Tell me not here, it needs not saying,

  What tune the enchantress plays

  In aftermaths of soft September

  Or under blanching mays,

  For she and I were long acquainted

  And I knew all her ways.

  On russet floors, by waters idle,

  The pine lets fall its cone;

  The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing

  In leafy dells alone;

  And traveler’s joy beguiles in autumn

  Hearts that have lost their own.

  On acres of the seeded grasses

  The changing burnish heaves;

  Or marshalled under moons of harvest

  Stand still all night the sheaves;

  Or beeches strip in storms for winter

  And stain the wind with leaves.

  Possess, as I possessed a season,

  The countries I resign,

  Where over elmy plains the highway

  Would mount the hills and shine,

  And full of shade the pillared forest