MORE POEMS A.E. Housman They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine, but manÕs This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when theyÕre in trouble And I am not. I EASTER HYMN 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 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 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. 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 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; 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 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. But I will go where they are hid That never were begot, To my inheritance amid The nation that is not. Where mixed with me the sandstorms drift, And nerve and heart 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; A people prone and haggard Beheld their lightnings hurled: All round, like Sinai, staggered The sceptre-shaken world. But now their coins are tarnished, Their towers decayed away, Their kingdom swept and garnished For haler kings than they; Their arms the rust hath eaten, Their statues none regard: 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 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 THE SAGE TO THE YOUNG MAN O youth whose heart is right, Whose loins are girt to gain The hell-defended height Where virtue beckons plain; Who seest the stark array And hast not stayed to count But singly will assay The many-cannoned mount: Well is thy war begun; 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? 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 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. 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, On, for thine hour is short. It may be thou shalt gain The hell-defended fort. V DIFFUGERE NIVES HORACE. ODES IV. 7. 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. 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 Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers Comes autumn with his apples scattering; then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs. But oh, whateÕer the sky-led seasons mar, Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams; 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 The fingers of no heir will ever hold. When thou descendest once the shades among, The stern assize and equal judgment oÕer, Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue, No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more. 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; Hope lies to mortals And most believer her, But manÕs deceiver Was never mine. The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of loversÕ meeting Or luck or fame; Mine were of trouble And mine were steady, 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. 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. Alas, the country whence I fare It is where I would stay, And where I would not, it is there That I shall be for aye. And one remembers and forgets But Ôtis not found again, Not though they hale in crimsoned nets The sunset from the main. IX When green buds hand in the elm like dust And sprinkle the lime like rain, Forth I wander, forth I must And drink of life again. Forth I must by hedgerow bowers To look at the leaves uncurled, And stand in 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: 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, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone. The rainy Pleiads wester And seek beyond the sea The head that I shall dream of That will 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. 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 me man alive. When I was off to dreamland And left my limbs forgot, Who stayed at home to mind them, And breathed when I did not? 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. 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, 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; For bear to cease or languish yet, Though soon you must and will. By Sestos town, in HeroÕs tower, On HeroÕs heart Leander lies; The signal torch has burned its hour And sputters as it dies. Beneath him, in the nighted firth, 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 Where, like a bird set free, Up from the eastern se Soars the delightful day. To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, 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. *** Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found How hopeless underground Falls the remorseful day. XVII Bells in tower at evening toll, And the light forsakes the soul; Soon will eveningÕs self be gone And the whispering night come on. Blame not thou the faulting 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 to look all day A lover in the eyes. Oh, maiden, let your distaff be, And pace the flowery meads with me, And I will tell you lies. ÔTis blithe to see the sunshine fail, And hear the land grow still, 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. Who made the world I cannot tell; ÔTis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed. And so, no doubt, in time gone by, 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 their noteless number Ran red like mine. How still, with every pulse in station, Frost in the founts that used to leap, The put-to-death, the perished nation How sound they sleep! These too, these veins which life convulses, Wait but a while, shall cease to bound; I with ice in all my pulses Shall sleep as sound. XXI The world goes none the lamer 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 carcase, Farewell, my aery soul. Oh worse remains for others, And worse to fear had I Than here 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 winterÕs cold, 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 wharf of Lethe waiting, Count you to find? Not me. The brisk 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 fire that frets the eastern sky Leads back my day of birth; The far wide-wandered hour when I Came crying upon earth. 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 you 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 earthÕs 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 leastÕs as good as done, And I must get a London one. XXX Shake hands, we shall never be friends, allÕs over, I only vex you the more I try; AllÕs wrong that ever IÕve done or said And naught to help it in this dull head; Shake hands, hereÕs luck, good-bye. But if you come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shameÕs to share Be good to the lad that loves you true And the soul that was born to die for you, And whistle and IÕll 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. To put the world between us We parted, stiff and dry; ÒGood-bye,Ó said you, Òforget me.Ó ÒI will, no fear,Ó said I. If here, where clover whitens The dead manÕs 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, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word. XXXII With seed the sowers scatter The furrows as they go. Poor lads, Ôtis little matter How many sorts they sow, For only one will grow. The charlock on the fallow Will take the travellerÕs eyes, And gild the ploughland sallow With flowers before it dies, But twice Ôtwill not arise. The stinging nettle only Will still be found to stand: The numberless, the lonely, The thronger of the land, The leaf that hurts the hand. It thrives, come sun, come showers; Blow east, blow west, it springs; It peoples towns, and towers Above the courts of Kings; And touch it and it stings. XXXIII On forelands high in heaven, ÔTis many a year gone by, Amidst the fall of even Would stand my friends and I. Before our foolish faces Lay hands we did not see; Our eyes were in the places Where we shall 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 fret we and molder By grange and rick and shed, And every moon are older, And soon we shall be dead. Heigho, Ôtwas true and pity; But there we lads must stay. Troy was a steepled city, But Troy was far away. And round we turned lamenting To homes 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 in 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 hillside highway And whistles loud the while, And vaults the stile. On miry meads in winter The footballs sprung and fell; May stuck the land with wickets: For all the 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. That passed; and long I carry The life that season marred, Because the child of Adam Is not so evil-starred As he is hard. Yet flesh, now too, has thorn-pricks, And shoulders carry care, Even as in other seasons, When I and not my heir Was young and there. 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 to-day, a glittering 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 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 summerÕs 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 and 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 blood 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 the lesson plain; But they, when I forgot and ran, Remembered and remain. XL Farewell to a name and a number, Recalled again To darkness and silence and slumber In blood and pain. So ceases and turns to the thing He was born to be 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. Turn east and over Thames to Kent And come to the seaÕs brim, And find his everlasting tent And touch your cap to him. XLII A. J. J. When heÕs returned IÕll tell him Ñ 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 news 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: heÕs 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 In flaming heaven they flare; They sign with conflagration The empty moors of air. The signal fires of warning They blaze, but none regard, And on from night to morning The world runs ruinward. XLIV Far known to sea and shore, Foursquare and founded well, 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 The belfry stands again. At to-fall of the day. Again its curfew tolls, 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 The steersman of Triest. Andrea, fare you well; Venice, farewell to thee. The tower that stood and fell Is not rebuilt for 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 Sons of landsmen, sons of seamen, hear 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 the havens 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, 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, ÒLandsman of the land of Biscay, have you help for grief and me?Ó 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.