selections from Last Poems

IX

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.

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,

One season ruined of your little store.

May will be fine next year as like as not:

But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

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.

It is in truth iniquity on high

To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,

And mar the merriment as you and I

Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.

My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;

Our only portion is the estate of man:

We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours

To-morrow it will hie on far behests;

The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours

Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

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.

A.E. Housman



X

COULD man be drunk for ever

With liquor, love, or fights,

Lief should I rouse at morning

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.

A.E. Housman



XII

THE laws of God, the laws of man,

He may keep that will and can;

Not I: let God and man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs

Let them mind their own affairs.

Their deeds I judge and much condemn,

Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, say I , and they

Need only look the other way.

But no, they will not; they must still

Wrest their neighbour to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hell-fire.

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.

They will be master, right or wrong;

Though both are foolish, both are strong.

And since, my soul, we cannot fly

To Saturn nor to Mercury,

Keep we must, if keep we can,

These foreign laws of God and man.

A.E. Housman



XXI

THE fairies break their dances

And leave the printed lawn,

And up from India glances

The silver sail of dawn.

The candles burn their sockets,

The blinds let through the day,

The young man feels his pockets

And wonders what's to pay.

A.E. Housman



XXIX

WAKE not for the world-heard thunder,

Nor the chimes that earthquakes toll;

Stars may plot in heaven with planet,

Lightning rive the rock of granite,

Tempest tread the oakwood under,

Fear not you for flesh or soul;

Marching, fighting, victory past,

Stretch your limbs in peace at last.

Stir not for the soldier's drilling,

Nor the fever nothing cures;

Throb of drum and timbal's rattle

Call but men alive to battle,

And the fife with death-notes filling

Screams for blood--but not for yours.

Times enough you bled your best;

Sleep on now, and take your rest.

Sleep, my lad; the French have landed,

London's burning, Windsor's down.

Clasp your cloak of earth about you;

We must man the ditch without you,

March unled and fight short-handed,

Charge to fall and swim to drown.

Duty, friendship, bravery o'er,

Sleep away, lad; wake no more.

A. E. Housman



XXXV

WHEN first my way to fair I took

Few pence in purse had I,

And long I used to stand and look

At things I could not buy.

Now times are altered: if I care

To buy a thing, I can;

The pence are here and there's the fair,

But where's the lost young man?

-- To think that two and two are four

And niether five nor three

The heart of man has long been sore

And long 'tis like to be.

A.E. Housman



Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries (XXXVI)

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.

A.E. Housman



XXXVIII

OH stay at home, my lad, and plough

The land and not the sea,

And leave the soldiers at their drill,

And all about the idle hill

Shepherd your sheep with me.

Oh stay with company and mirth

And daylight and the air;

Too full already is the grave

Of fellows that were good and brave

And died bacause they were.

A.E. Housman

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