Alfred Edward Housman

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;

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,

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 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,

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.

accuracy is a duty and not a virtue

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.

Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread, Look not to left nor right:

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;

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,

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.