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A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems

Page 14

by A. E. Housman

Oh were he and I together, 195

  Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? 212

  On forelands high in heaven, 173

  On moonlit health and lonesome bank 14

  On the idle hill of summer, 45

  On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; 41

  On your midnight pallet lying, 17

  Once in the wind of morning 53

  Onward led the road again 118

  Others, I am not the first, 40

  Say, lad, have you things to do? 32

  Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over; 170

  Shot? so quick, so clean an ending? 58

  Smooth between sea and land 185

  Soldier from the wars returning, 93

  Some can gaze and not be sick 210

  Star and coronal and bell 102

  Stars, I have seen them fall, 145

  Stay, if you list, O passer by the way; 206

  Stone, steel, dominions pass, 164

  Tarry, delight; so seldom met, 155

  Tell me not here, it needs not saying, 132

  ‘Terence, this is stupid stuff: 78

  The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers 94

  The end of the year fell chilly 215

  The fairies break their dances 107

  The farms of home lie lost in even, 154

  The half-moon westers low, my love, 113

  The lad came to the door at night, 68

  The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair, 31

  The laws of God, the laws of man, 97

  The mill-stream, now that noises cease, 159

  The night is freezing fast, 106

  The night my father got me 100

  The olive in its orchard 219

  The orchards half the way 124

  The Queen she sent to look for me, 90

  The rain, it streams on stone and hillock, 104

  The rainy Pleiads wester, 151

  The sigh that heaves the grasses 114

  The sloe was lost in flower, 108

  The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws 142

  The star-filled seas are smooth to-night 75

  The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do: 211

  The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread, 30

  The Sun at noon to higher air, 16

  The time you won your town the race 25

  The vane on Hughley steeple 77

  The Wain upon the northern steep 103

  The weeping Pleiads wester, 150

  The winds out of the west land blow, 49

  The world goes none the lamer, 161

  Their seed the sowers scatter 172

  There pass the careless people 20

  These, in the day when heaven was falling, 128

  They say my verse is sad: no wonder. 136

  —They shall have breath that never were, 205

  Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly: 64

  This time of year a twelvemonth past, 33

  ’Tis five years since, ‘An end,’ said I, 209

  Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain 112

  ’Tis spring; come out to ramble 39

  ’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town 50

  To stand up straight and tread the turning mill, 167

  Twice a week the winter thorough 23

  Wake: the silver dusk returning 8

  Wake not for the world-heard thunder 116

  We’ll to the woods no more, 84

  West and away the wheels of darkness roll, 127

  Westward on the high-hilled plains 71

  What man is he that yearneth 224

  ‘What sound awakened me, I wonder, 98

  When Adam walked in Eden young, 196

  When first my way to fair I took 126

  When green buds hang in the elm like dust 149

  When he’s returned I’ll tell him – oh, 182

  When I came last to Ludlow 74

  When I meet the morning beam 56

  When I was one-and-twenty 19

  When I watch the living meet, 18

  When I would muse in boyhood 122

  When Israel out of Egypt came 138

  When lads were home from labour 133

  When smoke stood up from Ludlow, 12

  When summer’s end is nighing 130

  When the bells justle in the tower 202

  When the eye of day is shut, 123

  When the lad for longing sighs, 11

  White in the moon the long road lies, 46

  With rue my heart is laden 70

  Yon flakes that fret the eastern sky 165

  Yonder see the morning blink: 96

  You smile upon your friend to-day, 73

  Young is the blood that yonder 174

  Index of Titled Poems

  A. J. J. 182

  Aeschylus, Septem Contra Thebas 223

  Astronomy 103

  Atys 193–4

  Bredon Hill 28–9

  Carpenter’s Son, The 61–2

  Culprit, The 100

  Day of Battle, The 72

  Defeated, The 213

  Deserter, The 98–9

  Diffugere Nives. Horace: Odes iv 7 142–3

  Easter Hymn 137

  Eight O’Clock 101

  1887 3–4

  Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 128

  Epithalamium 110–11

  Euripides, Alcestis 226–7

  Fancy’s Knell 133–4

  First of May, The 124–5

  Grenadier 90

  Hell Gate 118–21

  Hughley Steeple 77

  I Counsel You Beware 166

  Illic Jacet 89

  Immortal Part, the 56–7

  Isle of Portland, The 75

  Lancer 91

  Land of Biscay, The 186–7

  Lent Lily, The 39

  March 16

  Merry Guide, The 53–5

  New Mistress, The 44

  New Year’s Eve 215–17

  Olive, The 219

  Oracles, The 112

  Parta Quies 189

  R. L. S. 218

  Recruit, The 6–7

  Reveille 8

  Revolution 127

  Sage to the Young Man, The 140–1

  Sinner’s Rue 117

  Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 224–5

  Spring Morning 102

  To an Athlete Dying Young 25–6

  True Lover, The 68–9

  Welsh Marches, The 37–8

  West, The 85–6

  *Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

  *Pronounced Breedon.

  *Written by A. E. H. on the flyleaf of a copy of Manilius, Book I, which he gave to Walter Headlam.

  *I mean such matters as these: the existence in some metres, not in others, of an inherent alternation of stresses, stronger and weaker; the presence in verse of silent and invisible feet, like rests in music; the reason why some lines of different length will combine harmoniously while others can only be so combined by great skill or good luck; why, while blank verse can be written in lines of ten or six syllables, a series of octosyllables ceases to be verse if they are not rhymed; how Coleridge, in applying the new principle which he announced in the preface to Christabel, has fallen between two stools; the necessary limit to inversion of stress, which Milton understood and Bridges overstepped; why, of two pairs of rhymes, equally correct and both consisting of the same vowels and consonants, one is richer to the mental ear and the other poorer; the office of alliteration in verse, and how its definition must be narrowed if it is to be something which can perform that office and not fail of its effect or actually defeat its purpose.

  *It is now customary to say that the nineteenth century had a similar lingo of its own. A lingo it had, or came to have, and in the seventies and eighties the minor poets and poetasters were all using the same supposedly poetic diction. It was imitative and sapless, but not preposterous: its leading characteri
stic was a stale and faded prettiness.

 

 

 


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