Poems by Alfred Edward Housman
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As I gird on for fighting
The Wain upon the northern steep
Could man be drunk for ever
He stood, and heard the steeple
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
He is here, Urania’s son,
When lads were home from labour
The Queen she sent to look for me,
Onward led the road again
Her strong enchantments failing,
Oh hard is the bed they have made him,
In midnights of November,
In the morning, in the morning,
In valleys green and still
I ‘listed at home for a lancer,
Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough
From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Leave your home behind, lad,
Wake: the silver dusk returning
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
Clunton and Clunbury,
Loitering with a vacant eye
Far in a western brookland
The lad came to the door at night,
With rue my heart is laden
The star-filled seas are smooth to-night
Westward on the high-hilled plains
"Far I hear the bugle blow
You smile upon your friend to-day,
When I came last to Ludlow
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
The vane on Hughley steeple
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
I Hoed and trenched and weeded,
Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers
When the lad for longing sighs,
When smoke stood up from Ludlow,
"Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
The sun at noon to higher air,
On your midnight pallet lying
When I watch the living meet,
When I was one-and-twenty
There pass the careless people
The time you won your town the race
Into my heart an air that kills
In my own shire, if I was sad
Once in the wind of morning
When I meet the morning beam,
Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly:
If it chance your eye offend you,
Bring, in this timeless grave to throw,
"Here the hangman stops his cart:
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Look not in my eyes, for fear
It nods and curtseys and recovers
Twice a week the winter thorough
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Oh fair enough are sky and plain,
In summertime on Bredon
The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,
Say, lad, have you things to do?
'Tis spring; come out to ramble
This time of year a twelvemonth past,
Along the fields as we came by
"Is my team ploughing,
High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Others, I am not the first,
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
From far, from eve and morning
If truth in hearts that perish
"Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be?
'Tis time, I think by Wenlock town
On the idle hill of summer,
White in the moon the long road lies,
As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The winds out of the west land blow,
West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
We’ll to the weeds no more,
I walked alone and thinking,
Soldier from the wars returning,
Star and coronal and bell
Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
The night my father got me
"What sound awakened me, I wonder,
The fairies break their dances
The orchards half the way
The half-moon westers low, my love,
The laws of God, the laws of man,
The night is freezing fast,
‘Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
The rain, it streams on stone and hillock,
The sigh that heaves the grasses
The sloe was lost in flower,
Beyond the moor and the mountain crest
Wake not for the world-heard thunder
When first my way to fair I took
When I would muse in boyhood
When summer’s end is nighing
When the eye of day is shut,
Yonder see the morning blink: