by A E Housman
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 carcass,
Farewell, my aery soul.
Oh worse remains for others
And worse to fear had I
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.
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 winter’s cold,
The lad that hopes for heaven
Shall fill his mouth with mould.
XXIII.
Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one cone for fee,
Whom, on the far quayside in waiting,
Count you to find? not me.
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.
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 the earth.
Then came I crying, and to-day,
With heavier cause to plain,
Despair I into death away,
Not to be born again.
XXVI. I Counsel You Beware
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.
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:
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 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 and said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
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
Ad the soul that was born to die for you,
And whistle and I’ll be there.
XXXI.
Because I like you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you and I promised
I’d throw the thought away.
To put the world between us
We parted stiff and dry:
“Farewell,” said you, “forget me.”
”Fare well, I will,” said I.
If e’er, wehre 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
The heart you have not stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
was one that kept his word.
XXII.
Their seed the sowers scatter
Behind them as they go.
Poor lads, ’tis little matter
How many sorts they sow,
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,
But twice ‘twill not arise.
The stinging-nettle only
Will aye be found to stand:
The numberless, the lonely,
The filler of the land,
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,
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.
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,
The gold and amber shore;
Shires where the girls are fonder,
Towns where the pots hold more.
And here fust we and moulder
By grange and rick and shed
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,
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.
I see the air benighted
And all the dusking dales,
And lamps in England lighted,
And evening wrecked on 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 hill-side highway
And whistles loud the while
And vaults the stile
Yet backs, I think, have burdens
And shoulders carry care:
So fell the flesh its portion
When I and not my heir
Was young and there.
On miry meads in winter
THe football sprang and fell,
May stuck the land with wickets:
For all that 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.
And if so long I carry
The lot that season marred,
’Tis that the sons of Adam
Are not so evil-starred
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:
The thoughts are old.
XXXV.
Half-way, for one commandment broken,
The woman made her endless halt,
And she today, a glistering 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 the 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.
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.
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 bloods 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 my 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.
So time coils round in a ring
And home comes he
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.
Once he stept out but now my friend
Is not in marching trim
And you must tramp to the world’s end
To touch your cap to him.
XLII. A. J. J.
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.
I mourn you, and you heed not how;
Unsaid the word must stay;
Last month was time enough, but now
The new 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: he’s 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
Inflaming heaven they flare;
They sign with conflagration
The empty moors of air.
The signal-fires of warning
They blaze, but none regard;
And on through night to morning
The world runs ruinward.
XLIV.
Far known to sea and shore,
Foursquare to sea and shore,
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
Then belfry stands again.
At to-fall of the day
Again its curfew tolls
And burdens 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 in 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
Hearken, landsmen, hearken, seaman, 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.
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 a haven west of eve.
Under hill she neared the harbour, till the gazer could behold
On the golden deck the steers
man 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,
“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:
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,
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
And earth and thee restore
Thy creature that thou madest
