University Of Cambridge Faculty

"It was not that Housman did not understand the profound emotional content of poetry, and Horace's exquisite ode; he understood and felt it all too keenly. But his own emotional economy was subject to strict, self-imposed constraints. A poet of a later generation, W. H. Auden, also homosexual, attempted to psychoanalyze Housman's retreat from unbearable or unacceptable emotion—his love of rough trade—into a dry scholarship that was a form of self-hate, into which he could at least channel the emotions of cold anger and contempt. Housman, in what you could see as an act of self-punishment, chose to devote many years to an edition not of Horace or Propertius, the poets he really loved, but of Manilius, a minor Roman versifier whose long didactic poem on astrology must rank as one of the most obscure in the entire annals of poetry."

"My father gave me A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman on my 19th birthday (Housman's birthday too, as it happens). I had never visited Shropshire then, but nor had Housman when he wrote the poems so why should it stop me enjoying them? I think it was A Shropshire Lad that first taught me the hypnotic power of words."

"With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade."

"There, by the starlit fences, The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs."

"Far in a western brookland That bred me long ago The poplars stand and tremble By pools I used to know."

"Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong."

"Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again."

"Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see; Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge That will not shower on me."

"From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither; here am I."

"There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I."

"But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night."

"They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old."

"The bells they sound on Bredon And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people," — Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come."

"And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears."

"To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high, we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town."

"Oh, when I was in love with you Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again."

"His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away."

"There are two themes in Housman, man's mortality, which intensifies for him the beauty of nature, and man's rebellion against his lot. On his treatment of these themes his reputation for classicism subsists. But his presentation of both is hopelessly romantic and sentimental, the sentiment of his poems in fact is that of Omar Khayyam, which perhaps accounts for their popularity; he takes over the pagan concept of death and oblivion as the natural end of life and even as a not inappropriate end of youth, and lards it with a purely Christian self-pity, and a romantic indulgence in the pathetic fallacy."

"His underlip hinted at ferocity, and nothing hinted that he was the author of A Shropshire Lad. I heard him read a paper on "Prosody and Method" to the Oxford Philological Society. It was a masterly performance and annihilated some modern errors about Latin metric."

"A. E. Housman was the greatest Latinist of his age. He excelled at editing difficult Latin texts, which called for the highest degree of knowledge and judgement... Housman was, as A. C. Clark said, "daemonic", and whatever he touched revealed his extraordinary mastery. He was a perfectionist and expected other scholars to maintain the same very high standards as himself."

"I took Housman for a walk and asked him how he had come to write his early verses and whether there was any episode in his life which suggested their gruesome character, but he assured me it was not so. He had lived as a boy in Worcestershire, not in Shropshire, though within sight of the Shropshire hills, and there was nothing gruesome to record. He shows no trace now of anything romantic, being a typical Cambridge Don, prim in his manner, silent and rather shy, conventional in dress and manner, learned, accurate, and well-informed. He is professor there of Latin, talking fairly well, but not brilliantly or with any originality, depressed in tone, and difficult to rouse to any strong expression of opinion... I have a great admiration for his ‘Shropshire Lad,’ on account of its ballad qualities and the wonderful certainty in his choice of exactly the right word. We had much pleasant talk all day, and sat up again till twelve at night telling ghost stories. He takes an interest in these. Housman's personal appearance is one of depression and indifferent health. He does not smoke, drinks little, and would, I think, be quite silent if he were allowed to be."

"Romantic poetry as Housman received it was in need of correction. He corrected it. The romantic conflict of man against society, of man against immutable laws is still there, but presented by a man who had the classic craftsman's respect both for himself and his craft. The form is concise and accurate; but for all their lightness, his poems never lose the sense of earth, for all their grace, they are tough enough to sustain a considerable irony. The limits within which Housman was able to feel at all were strict, but within them he felt intensely, and both strictness and intensity are in his verse."

"The way in which Housman's poetry has been published is marked throughout by his passion for distinction, his craving to be famous, his equally strong and perverse dislike of being known."

"Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but an absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar."

"The emotional nature of his work fulfilled his own ideal. "I think that to transfuse emotion," he wrote in The Name and Nature of Poetry, "to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer—is the peculiar function of poetry." He judged it by the size of the lump it brought to his throat. It is in the light of his own statement that the verses of A Shropshire Lad should be considered. They are less the expression of profound experience than of common emotion intensely felt. The sad and bitter in life stirred him to write. The passing of time and time's revenges, injustice, fickleness of love, beauty's transience, and, over all, the shadow of death—with these he is preoccupied and from them his emotion springs... He cultivated the luxury of sadness, careful never to let it escape him, and he achieved neither more nor less than his ideal."

"In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning."

"I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word."

"Good-night; ensured release, Imperishable peace, Have these for yours, While sea abides, and land, And earth's foundations stand, And heaven endures."

"We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more."

"Here dead we lie 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."

"Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed."

"The rainy Pleiads wester, Orion plunges prone, The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone."

"Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine."

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

"Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. [...] Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. [...] The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. [...] and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."

"Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions."

"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."

"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."

"Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings All desired and timely things. All whom morning sends to roam, 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."

"He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck."

"And how am I to face the odds Of man’s bedevilment and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made."

"The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Now I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me."

"Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at mornings And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts."

"The troubles of our proud and angry dust Are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale."

"We for a certainty are not the first Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed Whatever brute and blackguard made the world."

"The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away, The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers. Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May."

"To be a textual critic requires aptitude for thinking and willingness to think; and though it also requires other things, those things are supplements and cannot be substitutes. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head."

"And, what is worse, the reader often shares the writer's prejudices, and is far too well pleased with his conclusions to examine either his premises or his reasoning. Stand on a barrel in the streets of Bagdad, and say in a loud voice, 'Twice two is four, and ginger is hot in the mouth, therefore Mohammed is the prophet of God', and your logic will probably escape criticism; or, if anyone should by chance criticise it, you could easily silence him by calling him a Christian dog."

"It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about "the old unscientific days". The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency."