Complete Poetical Works of a E Housman

by A E Housman

  For aught that I can see,

  Because this cursed trouble

  Has struck my days and me.

  The stars of heaven are steady,

  The founded hills remain,

  Though I to earth and darkness

  Return in blood and pain.

  Farewell to all belongings

  I won or bought or stole;

  Farewell, my lusty carcass,

  Farewell, my aery soul.

  Oh worse remains for others

  And worse to fear had I

  Than so at four-and-twenty

  To lay me down and die.

  XXII.

  Ho, everyone that thirsteth

  And hath the price to give,

  Come to the stolen waters,

  Drink and your soul shall live.

  Come to the stolen waters,

  And leap the guarded pale,

  And pull the flower in season

  Before desire shall fail.

  It shall not last for ever,

  No more than earth and skies;

  But he that drinks in season

  Shall live before he dies.

  June suns, you cannot store them

  To warm the winter’s cold,

  The lad that hopes for heaven

  Shall fill his mouth with mould.

  XXIII.

  Crossing alone the nighted ferry

  With the one cone for fee,

  Whom, on the far quayside in waiting,

  Count you to find? not me.

  The fond lackey to fetch and carry,

  The true, sick-hearted slave,

  Expect him not in the just city

  And free land of the grave.

  XXIV.

  Stone, steel, dominions pass,

  Faith too, no wonder;

  So leave alone the grass

  That I am under.

  All knots that lovers tie

  Are tied to sever.

  Here shall your sweetheart lie

  Untrue for ever.

  XXV.

  Yon flakes that fret the eastern sky

  Lead back my day of birth;

  The far, wide-wandered hour when I

  Came crying upon the earth.

  Then came I crying, and to-day,

  With heavier cause to plain,

  Despair I into death away,

  Not to be born again.

  XXVI. I Counsel You Beware

  Good creatures, do you love your lives

  And have you ears for sense?

  Here is a knife like other knives,

  That cost me eighteen pence.

  I need but stick it in my heart

  And down will come the sky,

  And earth’s foundations will depart

  And all you folk will die.

  XXVII.

  To stand up straight and tread the turning mill,

  To lie flat and know nothing and be still,

  Are the two trades of man; and which is worse

  I know not, but I know that both are ill.

  XXVIII.

  He, standing hushed, a pace or two apart,

  Among the bluebells of the listless plain,

  Thinks, and remembers how he cleansed his heart

  And washed his hands in innocence in vain.

  XXIX.

  From the wash the laundress sends

  My collars home with ravelled ends:

  I must fit, now these are frayed,

  My neck with new ones, London-made.

  Homespun collars, homespun hearts,

  Wear to rags in foreign parts.

  Mine at least’s as good as done,

  And I must get a London one.

  XXX.

  Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over:

  I only vex you the more I try.

  All’s wrong that ever I’ve done and said,

  And nought to help it in this dull head:

  Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye.

  But if you come to a road where danger

  Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,

  Be good to the lad that loves you true

  Ad the soul that was born to die for you,

  And whistle and I’ll be there.

  XXXI.

  Because I like you better

  Than suits a man to say,

  It irked you and I promised

  I’d throw the thought away.

  To put the world between us

  We parted stiff and dry:

  “Farewell,” said you, “forget me.”

  ”Fare well, I will,” said I.

  If e’er, wehre clover whitens

  The dead man’s knoll, you pass,

  And no tall flower to meet you

  Starts in the trefoiled grass,

  Halt by the headstone shading

  The heart you have not stirred,

  And say the lad that loved you

  was one that kept his word.

  XXII.

  Their seed the sowers scatter

  Behind them as they go.

  Poor lads, ’tis little matter

  How many sorts they sow,

  For only one will grow.

  The charlock on the fallow

  Will take the traveller’s eyes,

  And gild the ploughland sallow

  With flowers before it dies,

  But twice ‘twill not arise.

  The stinging-nettle only

  Will aye be found to stand:

  The numberless, the lonely,

  The filler of the land,

  The leaf that hurts the hand.

  That thrives, come sun, come showers;

  Blow east, blow west, it springs;

  It peoples towns and towers

  About the courts of Kings,

  And touch it and it stings.

  XXXIII.

  On forelands high in heaven,

  ’Tis many a year gone by,

  Amidst the fall of even

  Would stand my friends and I.

  Before our foolish faces

  Lay lands we did not see;

  Our eyes were in the places

  Where we should never be.

  “Oh, the pearl seas are yonder,

  The gold and amber shore;

  Shires where the girls are fonder,

  Towns where the pots hold more.

  And here fust we and moulder

  By grange and rick and shed

  And every moon are older,

  And soon we shall be dead.”

  Heigho, ’twas true and pity;

  But there we lads must stay.

  Troy was a steepled city,

  But Troy was far away.

  And home we turned lamenting

  To plains we longed to leave

  And silent hills indenting

  The orange band of eve.

  I see the air benighted

  And all the dusking dales,

  And lamps in England lighted,

  And evening wrecked on Wales.

  And starry darkness paces

  The road from sea to sea,

  And blots the foolish faces

  Of my poor friends and me.

  XXXIV.

  Young is the blood that yonder

  Strides out the dusty mile

  And breasts the hill-side highway

  And whistles loud the while

  And vaults the stile

  Yet backs, I think, have burdens

  And shoulders carry care:

  So fell the flesh its portion

  When I and not my heir

  Was young and there.

  On miry meads in winter

  THe football sprang and fell,

  May stuck the land with wickets:

  For all that eye could tell

  The world went well.

  Yet well, God knows, it went not,

  God knows, it went awry;

  For me, one flowery Maytime,

  It went so ill that I


  Designed to die.

  And if so long I carry

  The lot that season marred,

  ’Tis that the sons of Adam

  Are not so evil-starred

  As they are hard.

  Young is the blood that yonder

  Succeeds to rick and fold,

  Fresh are the form and favour

  And new the minted mould:

  The thoughts are old.

  XXXV.

  Half-way, for one commandment broken,

  The woman made her endless halt,

  And she today, a glistering token,

  Stands in the wilderness of salt.

  Behind, the vats of judgment brewing

  Thundered, and thick the brimstone snowed

  He to the hill of his undoing

  Pursued his road.

  XXXVI.

  Here the dead lie we because we did not choose

  To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

  Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,

  But young men think it is, and we were young.

  XXXVII.

  I did not lose my heart in summer’s even,

  When roses to the moonrise burst apart:

  When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,

  In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.

  I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,

  A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;

  That took the sabre straight and took it striking

  And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.

  XXXVIII.

  By shores and woods and steeples

  Rejoicing hearts receive

  Poured on a hundred peoples

  The far-shed alms of eve.

  Her hands are filled with slumber

  For world-wide labourers worn;

  Yet those are more in number

  That know her not from morn.

  Now who sees night for ever,

  He sees no happier sight:

  Night and no moon and never

  A star upon the night.

  XXXIX.

  My dreams are of a field afar

  And bloods and smoke and shot.

  There in their graves my comrades are,

  In my grave I am not.

  I too was taught the trade of man

  And spelt my lesson plain;

  But they, when I forgot and ran,

  Remembered and remain.

  XL.

  Farewell to a name and a number

  Resigned again

  To darkness and silence and slumber

  In blood and pain.

  So time coils round in a ring

  And home comes he

  A soldier cheap to the king

  And dear to me;

  So smothers in blood the burning

  And flaming flight

  Of valour and truth returning

  To dust and night.

  XLI.

  He looked at me with eyes I thought

  I was not like to find,

  The voice he begged for pence with

  Brought another man to mind.

  Oh no, lad, never touch your cap;

  It is not my half-crown:

  You have it from a better chap

  That long ago lay down.

  Once he stept out but now my friend

  Is not in marching trim

  And you must tramp to the world’s end

  To touch your cap to him.

  XLII. A. J. J.

  When he’s returned I’ll tell him — oh,

  Dear fellow, I forgot:

  Time was you would have cared to know,

  But now it matters not.

  I mourn you, and you heed not how;

  Unsaid the word must stay;

  Last month was time enough, but now

  The new must keep for aye.

  Oh, many a month before I learn

  Will find me starting still

  And listening, as the days return,

  For him that never will.

  Strange, strange to think his blood is cold

  And mine flows easy on,

  And that straight look, that heart of gold,

  That grace, that manhood, gone.

  The word unsaid will stay unsaid

  Though there was much to say;

  Last month was time enough: he’s dead,

  The news must keep for aye.

  XLIII.

  I wake from dreams and turning

  My vision on the height;

  I scan the beacons burning

  About the fields of night.

  Each in its steadfast station

  Inflaming heaven they flare;

  They sign with conflagration

  The empty moors of air.

  The signal-fires of warning

  They blaze, but none regard;

  And on through night to morning

  The world runs ruinward.

  XLIV.

  Far known to sea and shore,

  Foursquare to sea and shore,

  A thousand years it bore,

  And then the belfry fell.

  The steersman of Triest

  Looked where his mark should be,

  But empty was the west

  And Venice under sea.

  From dusty wreck dispersed

  Its stature mounts amain;

  On surer foot than first

  Then belfry stands again.

  At to-fall of the day

  Again its curfew tolls

  And burdens away

  The green and sanguine shoals.

  It looks to north and south,

  It looks to east and west;

  It guides to Lido mouth

  The steersman of Triest.

  Andrea, fare you well;

  Venice, farewell to thee.

  The tower that stood and fell

  Is not rebuilt in me.

  XLV.

  Smooth between sea and land

  Is laid the yellow sand,

  And here through summer days

  The seed of Adam plays.

  Here the child comes to found

  His unremaining mound,

  And the grown lad to score

  Two names upon the shore.

  Here on the level sand,

  Between the sea and land,

  What shall I build or write

  Against the fall of night?

  Tell me of runes to grave

  That hold the bursting wave,

  Or bastions to design

  For longer date than mine.

  Shall it be Troy or Rome

  I fence against the foam,

  Or my own name, to stay

  When I depart for aye?

  Nothing: too near at hand,

  Planing the figured sand,

  Effacing clean and fast

  Cities not built to last

  And charms devised in vain,

  Pours the confounding main.

  XLVI. The Land of Biscay

  Hearken, landsmen, hearken, seaman, to the tale of grief and me

  Looking from the land of Biscay on the waters of the sea.

  Looking from the land of Biscay over Ocean to the sky

  On the far-beholding foreland paced at even grief and I.

  There, as warm the west was burning and the east uncoloured cold,

  Down the waterway of sunset drove to shore a ship of gold.

  Gold of mast and gold of cordage, gold of sail to sight was she,

  And she glassed her ensign golden in the waters of the sea.

  Oh, said I, my friend and lover, take we now that ship and sail

  Outward in the ebb of hues and steer upon the sunset trail;

  Leave the night to fall behind us and the clouding countries leave:

  Help for you and me is yonder, in a haven west of eve.

  Under hill she neared the harbour, till the gazer could behold

  On the golden deck the steers
man standing at the helm of gold,

  Man and ship and sky and water burning in a single flame;

  And the mariner of Ocean, he was calling as he came:

  From the highway of the sunset he was shouting on the sea,

  “Landsman of the land of Biscay, have you help for grief and me?”

  When I heard I did not answer, I stood mute and shook my head:

  Son of earth and son of Ocean, much we thought and nothing said.

  Grief and I abode the nightfall, to the sunset grief and he

  Turned them from the land of Biscay on the waters of the sea.

  XLVII.

  O thou that from thy mansion,

  Through time and place to roam,

  Dost send abroad thy children,

  And then dost call them home,

  That men and tribes and nations

  And all thy hand hath made

  May shelter them from sunshine

  In thine eternal shade.

  We now to peace and darkness

  And earth and thee restore

  Thy creature that thou madest