A.E. Housman: More Poems (1936)

They say my verse is sad: no wonder

	They say my verse is sad: no wonder.
	Its narrow measure spans
	Rue for eternity, and sorrow
	Not mine, but man's.
5	This is for all ill-treated fellows
	Unborn and unbegot,
	For them to read when they're in trouble
	And I am not.

I

	If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
	You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
	Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
	Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
5	The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
	Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.
	But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
	At the right hand of majesty on high
	You sit, and sitting so remember yet
10	Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
	Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
	Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

II

	When Israel out of Egypt came
	Safe in the sea they trod;
	By day in cloud, by night in flame,
	Went on before them God.
5	He brought them with a stretched out hand
	Dry-footed through the foam,
	Past sword and famine, rock and sand,
	Lust and rebellion, home.
	I never over Horeb heard
10	The blast of advent blow;
	No fire-faced prophet brought me word
	Which way behoved me go.
	Ascended is the cloudy flame,
	The mount of thunder dumb;
15	The tokens that to Israel came,
	To me they have not come.
	I see the country far away
	Where I shall never stand;
	The heart goes where no footstep may
20	Into the promised land.
	[The realm I look upon and die
	Another man will own;
	He shall attain the heaven that I
	Perish and have not known.
25	But I will go where they are hid
	That never were begot,
	To my inheritance amid
	The nation that is not.
	When mixed with me the sandstorms drift
30	And nerve and thew and brain
	Are ashes for the air to lift
	And lightly shower again.]

III

	For these of old the trader
	Unpearled the Indian seas,
	The nations of the nadir
	Were diamondless for these;
5	A people prone and haggard
	Beheld their lightnings hurled:
	All round, like Sinai, staggered
	The sceptre-shaken world.
	But now their coins are tarnished,
10	Their towers decayed away,
	Their kingdom swept and garnished
	For haler kings than they;
	Their arms the rust hath eaten,
	Their statutes none regard:
15	Arabia shall not sweeten
	Their dust, with all her nard.
	They cease from long vexation,
	Their nights, their days are done,
	The pale, the perished nation
20	That never see the sun;
	From the old deep-dusted annals
	The years erase their tale,
	And round them race the channels
	That take no second sail.

IV

	O youth whose heart is right,
	Whose loins are girt to gain
	The hell-defended height
	Where Virtue beckons plain;
5	Who seest the stark array
	And hast not stayed to count
	But singly wilt assay
	The many-cannoned mount:
	Well is thy war begun;
10	Endure, be strong and strive;
	But think not, O my son,
	To save thy soul alive.
	Wilt thou be true and just
	And clean and kind and brave?
15	Well; but for all thou dost,
	Be sure it shall not save.
	Thou, when the night falls deep,
	Thou, though the mount be won,
	High heart, thou shalt but sleep
20	The sleep denied to none.
	Others, or ever thou,
	To scale those heights were sworn;
	And some achieved, but now
	They never see the morn.
25	How shouldst thou keep the prize?
	Thou wast not born for aye.
	Content thee if thine eyes
	Behold it in thy day.
	O youth that wilt attain,
30	On, for thine hour is short.
	It may be thou shalt gain
	The hell-defended fort.

V

	The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
	And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
	The river to the river-bed withdraws,
	And altered is the fashion of the earth.
5	The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
	And unapparelled in the woodland play.
	The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
	Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.
	Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
10	Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
	Comes autumn, with his apples scattering;
	Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.
	But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
	Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:
15	Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are,
	And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.
	Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
	The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
	Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
20	The fingers of no heir will ever hold.
	When thou descendest once the shades among,
	The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
	Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
	No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.
25	Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
	Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
	And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
	The love of comrades cannot take away.

VI

	I to my perils
	Of cheat and charmer
	Came clad in armour
	By stars benign.
5	Hope lies to mortals
	And most believe her,
	But man's deceiver
	Was never mine.
	The thoughts of others
10	Were light and fleeting,
	Of lovers' meeting
	Or luck or fame.
	Mine were of trouble,
	And mine were steady,
15	So I was ready
	When trouble came.

VII

	Stars, I have seen them fall,
	But when they drop and die
	No star is lost at all
	From all the star-sown sky.
5	The toil of all that be
	Helps not the primal fault;
	It rains into the sea,
	And still the sea is salt.

VIII

	Give me a land of boughs in leaf,
	A land of trees that stand;
	Where trees are fallen, there is grief;
	I love no leafless land.
5	Alas, the country whence I fare,
	It is where would stay;
	And where I would not, it is there
	That I shall be for aye.
	And one remembers, and one forgets,
10	But 'tis not found again,
	Not though they hale in crimsoned nets
	The sunset from the main.

IX

	When green buds hang in the elm like dust
	And sprinkle the lime like rain,
	Forth 1 wander, forth I must
	And drink of life again.
5	Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
	To look at the leaves uncurled
	And stand in the fields where cuckoo-flowers
	Are lying about the world.

X

	The weeping Pleiads wester,
	And the moon is under seas;
	From bourn to bourn of midnight
	Far sighs the rainy breeze:
5	It sighs from a lost country
	To a land I have not known;
	The weeping Pleiads wester,
	And I lie down alone.

XI

	The rainy Pleiads wester,
	Orion plunges prone,
	The stroke of midnight ceases,
	And I lie down alone.
5	The rainy Pleiads wester
	And seek beyond the sea
	The head that I shall dream of,
	And 'twill not dream of me.

XII

	I promise nothing: friends will part;
	All things may end, for all began;
	And truth and singleness of heart
	Are mortal even as is man.
5	But this unlucky love should last
	When answered passions thin to air;
	Eternal fate so deep has cast
	Its sure foundation of despair.

XIII

	I lay me down and slumber
	And every morn revive.
	Whose is the night-long breathing
	That keeps a man alive?
5	When I was off to dreamland
	And left my limbs forgot,
	Who stayed at home to mind them,
	And breathed when I did not?
	[
10	]
	For oh, 'twas never I.
	If I were you, young fellow,
	I'd save what brave breath I had,
	For sleepers cut the waking:
15	Oh, spare your pains, my lad.
	- I waste my time in talking,
	No heed at all takes he,
	My kind and foolish comrade
	That breathes all night for me.

XIV

	The farms of home lie lost in even,
	I see far off the steeple stand;
	West and away from here to heaven,
	Still is the land.
5	There if I go no girl will greet me,
	No comrade hollo from the hill,
	No dog run down the yard to meet me:
	The land is still.
	The land is still by farm and steeple,
10	And still for me the land may stay:
	There I was friends with perished people,
	And there lie they.

XV

	Tarry, delight; so seldom met,
	So sure to perish, tarry still;
	Forbear to cease or languish yet,
	Though soon you must and will.
5	By Sestos town, in Hero's tower,
	On Hero's heart Leander lies;
	The signal torch has burned its hour
	And sputters as it dies.
	Beneath him, in the nighted firth,
10	Between two continents complain
	The seas he swam from earth to earth
	And he must swim again.

XVI

	How clear, how lovely bright,
	How beautiful to sight
	Those beams of morning play,
	How heaven laughs out with glee
5	Where, like a bird set free,
	Up from the eastern sea
	Soars the delightful day.
	To-day I shall be strong,
	No more shall yield to wrong,
10	Shall squander life no more;
	Days lost, I know not how,
	I shall retrieve them now;
	Now I shall keep the vow
	I never kept before.
15	- Ensanguining the skies
	How heavily it dies
	Into the west away;
	Past touch and sight and sound,
	Not further to be found,
20	How hopeless under ground
	Falls the remorseful day.

XVII

	Bells in tower at evening toll,
	And the day forsakes the soul;
	Soon will evening's self be gone
	And the whispering night come on.
5	Blame not thou the blinded light
	Nor the whisper of the night:
	Though the whispering night were still,
	Yet the heart would counsel ill.

XVIII

	Delight it is in youth and May
	To see the morn arise,
	And more delight, or so they say,
	To read in lovers' eyes.
5	Oh maiden, let your distaff be,
	And pace the flowery meads with me,
	And I will tell you lies.
	'Tis blithe to see the sunshine fail,
	And hear the land grow still
10	And listen till the nightingale
	Is heard beneath the hill.
	Oh follow me where she is flown
	Into the leafy woods alone,
	And I will work you ill.

XIX

	The mill-stream, now that noises cease,
	Is all that does not hold its peace;
	Under the bridge it murmurs by,
	And here are night and hell and I.
5	Who made the world I cannot tell:
	'Tis made, and here I am in hell.
	My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
	I never soiled with such a deed.
	And so, no doubt, in time gone by
10	Some have suffered more than I,
	Who only spend the night alone
	And strike my fist upon the stone.

XX

	Like mine, the veins of these that slumber
	Leapt once with dancing fires divine;
	The blood of all this noteless number
	Ran red like mine.
5	How still, with every pulse in station,
	Frost in the founts that used to leap,
	The thralls of night, the perished nation,
	How sound they sleep!
	These too, these veins which life convulses,
10	Wait but a while, shall cease to bound;
	I with the ice in all my pulses
	Shall sleep as sound.

XXI

	The world goes none the lamer,
	For ought that I can see,
	Because this cursed trouble
	Has struck my days and me.
5	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
10	I won or bought or stole;
	Farewell, my lusty carcase,
	Farewell, my aery soul.
	Oh worse remains for others
	And worse to fear had I
15	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.
5	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,
10	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,
15	The lad that hopes for heaven
	Shall fill his mouth with mould.

XXIII

	Crossing alone the nighted ferry
	With the one coin for fee,
	Whom, on the far quayside in waiting,
	Count you to find? not me.
5	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.
5	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 earth.
5	Then came I crying, and to-day,
	With heavier cause to plain,
	Depart I into death away,
	Not to be born again.

XXVI

	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.
5	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:
	1 must fit, now these are frayed,
	My neck with new ones London-made.
5	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 or said,
	And nought to help it in this dull head:
5	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
	And the soul that was born to die for you,
10	And whistle and I'll be there.

XXXI

	Because I liked you better
	Than suits a man to say,
	It irked you, and I promised
	To throw the thought away.
5	To put the world between us
	We parted, stiff and dry;
	„Good-bye,“ said you, „forget me.“
	„I will, no fear,“ said I.
	If here, where clover whitens
10	The dead man's knoll, you pass,
	And no tall flower to meet you
	Starts in the trefoiled grass,
	Halt by the headstone naming
	The heart no longer stirred,
15	And say the lad that loved you
	Was one that kept his word.
	Because I liked you better
	Than suits a man to say,
	It irked you, and I promised
20	I'd throw the thought away.
	To put the world between us
	We parted stiff and dry;
	„Farewell,“ said you, „forget me.“
	„Farewell, I will,“ said I.
25	If e'er, where 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
30	The heart you have not stirred,
	And say the lad that loved you
	Was one that kept his word.

XXXII

	Their seed the sowers scatter
	Behind them as they go.
	Poor lads, 'tis little matter
	How many sorts they sow,
5	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,
10	But twice 'twill not arise.
	The stinging-nettle only
	Will aye be found to stand:
	The numberless, the lonely,
	The filler of the land,
15	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,
20	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.
5	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,
10	The gold and amber shore;
	Shires where the girls are fonder,
	Towns where the pots hold more.
	And here fret we and moulder
	By grange and rick and shed
15	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,
20	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.
25	I see the air benighted
	And all the dusking dales,
	And lamps in England lighted,
	And evening wrecked on Wales.
	And starry darkness paces
30	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,
5	And vaults the stile.
	Yet backs, I think, have burdens
	And shoulders carry care:
	So fell to flesh its portion
	When I and not my heir
10	Was young and there.
	On miry meads in winter
	The football sprang and fell,
	May stuck the land with wickets:
	For all the eye could tell
15	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
20	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
25	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:
30	The thoughts are old.

XXXV

	Half-way, for one commandment broken,
	The woman made her endless halt,
	And she today, a glistenng token,
	Stands in the wilderness of salt.
5	Behind, the vats of judgment brewing
	Thundered, and thick the brimstone snowed:
	He to the hill of his undoing
	Pursued his road.

XXXVI

	Here 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.
5	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.
5	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,
10	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 blood and smoke and shot.
	There in their graves my comrades are,
	In my grave I am not.
5	I too was taught the trade of man
	And spelt the 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.
5	So time coils round in ring
	And home comes he
	A soldier cheap to the King
	And dear to me;
	So smothers in blood the burning
10	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.
5	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
10	Is not in marching trim
	And you must tramp to the world's end
	To touch your cap to him.

XLII

	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.
5	I mourn you, and you heed not how;
	Unsaid the word must stay;
	Last month was time enough, but now
	The news must keep for aye.
	Oh, many a month before I learn
10	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,
15	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,
20	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.
5	Each in its steadfast station
	Inflaming heaven they flare;
	They sign with conflagration
	The empty moors of air.
	The signal-fires of warning
10	They blaze, but none regard;
	And on through night to morning
	The world runs ruinward.

XLIV

	Far known to sea and shore,
	Four square and founded well,
	A thousand years it bore,
	And then the belfry fell.
5	The steersman of Triest
	Looked where his mark should be,
	But empty was the west
	And Venice under sea.
	From dusty wreck dispersed
10	Its stature mounts amain;
	On surer foot than first
	The belfry stands again.
	At to-fall of the day
	Again its curfew tolls
15	And burdens far away
	The green and sanguine shoals.
	It looks to north and south,
	It looks to east and west;
	It guides to Lido mouth
20	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.
5	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,
10	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,
15	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
20	When I depart for aye?
	Nothing: too near at hand,
	Planing the figured sand,
	Effacing clean and fast
	Cities not built to last
25	And charms devised in vain,
	Pours the confounding main.

XLVI

	Hearken, landsmen, hearken, seamen, 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.
5	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
10	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 steersman standing at the helm of gold,
15	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:
20	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,
5	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
10	And earth and thee restore
	Thy creature that thou madest
	And wilt cast forth no more.

XLVIII

	Good-night; ensured release,
	Imperishable peace,
	Have these for yours,
	While sea abides, and land,
5	And earth's foundations stand,
	And heaven endures.
	When earth's foundations flee,
	Nor sky nor land nor sea
	At all is found,
10	Content you, let them burn:
	It is not your concern;
	Sleep on, sleep sound.