A. E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, “The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.” And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

As we went walking far and wide Through silent fields and countryside, We watched together star signs brim And rise above the ocean’s rim, And planets too, that fret with light The icy caverns of the Night. These constellations we now mark, When we were not, in formless dark, A poet, centuries before, Would watch from the Italian shore Drop in the sea, and mindful Earth Had made him mortal from his birth, He set on high his music’s bars Among the everlasting stars, To those to come, clear warning sign To place no faith in the divine; For sacred to the pole unfurled Above, and compassing the world, These songs yet suffered sad disgrace And almost sank without a trace: Though to our strand this wreckage came, It scarcely owned its author’s name. Mine not to exhort the gods Or stars that vex our mortal odds, But love of virtue quick to fade Makes me seek fame with human aid. A man, I chose a man to stand At this front page and my right hand— Who thrive or perish in my pages, Brief friend, your name should last the ages. I send these lines to you who went Where stars rise in the Orient, From here where constellations sink Below the ocean’s western brink. Take them: for that day will come To add us to the canceled sum And give our bones to earth to rot (For we have no immortal lot, And souls that will not last forever) And the chain of comrades sever.

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Soldier from the wars returning, Spoiler of the taken town,

The lad came to the door at night, When lovers crown their vows, And whistled soft and out of sight In shadow of the boughs. ‘I shall not vex you with my face Henceforth, my love, for aye; So take me in your arms a space Before the east is grey. ‘When I from hence away am past I shall not find a bride, And you shall be the first and last I ever lay beside.’ She heard and went and knew not why; Her heart to his she laid; Light was the air beneath the sky But dark under the shade. ‘Oh do you breathe, lad, that your breast Seems not to rise and fall, And here upon my bosom prest There beats no heart at all?’ ‘Oh loud, my girl, it once would knock, You should have felt it then; But since for you I stopped the clock It never goes again.’ ‘Oh lad, what is it, lad, that drips Wet from your neck on mine? What is it falling on my lips, My lad, that tastes of brine?’ ‘Oh like enough ’tis blood, my dear, For when the knife has slit The throat across from ear to ear ’Twill bleed because of it.’

Far in a western brookland That bred me long ago The poplars stand and tremble By pools I used to know. There, in the windless night-time, The wanderer, marvelling why, Halts on the bridge to hearken How soft the poplars sigh. He hears: long since forgotten In fields where I was known, Here I lie down in London And turn to rest alone. There, by the starlit fences, The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields forgotten Bleach the bones of comrades slain, Lovely lads and dead and rotten; None that go return again. Far the calling bugles hollo, High the screaming fife replies, Gay the files of scarlet follow: Woman bore me, I will rise.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves. 'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger When Uricon the city stood: 'Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood. Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman At yonder heaving hill would stare: The blood that warms an English yeoman, The thoughts that hurt him, they were there. 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. The gale, it plies the saplings double, It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone: To-day the Roman and his trouble Are ashes under Uricon.

Others, I am not the first, Have willed more mischief than they durst: If in the breathless night I too Shiver now, 'tis nothing new. More than I, if truth were told, Have stood and sweated hot and cold, And through their reins in ice and fire Fear contended with desire. Agued once like me were they, But I like them shall win my way Lastly to the bed of mould Where there's neither heat nor cold. But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love." And sure enough beneath the tree There walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heaves Its rainy-sounding silver leaves; And I spell nothing in their stir, But now perhaps they speak to her, And plain for her to understand They talk about a time at hand When I shall sleep with clover clad, And she beside another lad.