Bright Young Things discussion

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.

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
“Good-bye,” said you, “forget me.”
“I will, no fear,” said I.

If here, where 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 naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.

I walked alone and thinking,
And faint the nightwind blew
And stirred on mounds at crossways
The flower of sinner's rue.

Where the roads part they bury
Him that his own hand slays,
And so the weed of sorrow
Springs at the four cross ways.

By night I plucked it hueless,
When morning broke 'twas blue:
Blue at my breast I fastened
The flower of sinner's rue.

It seemed a herb of healing,
A balsam and a sign,
Flower of a heart whose trouble
Must have been worse than mine.

Dead clay that did me kindness,
I can do none to you,
But only wear for breastknot
The flower of sinner's rue.

The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

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 most 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 neighbor to their will,

And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire
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 flee
To Saturn or to Mercury
Keep we must, If we can
These foreign laws of God and man.

I found this on the internet:

Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England, on March 26, 1859, the eldest of seven children. A year after his birth, Housman's family moved to nearby Bromsgrove, where the poet grew up and had his early education. In 1877, he attended St. John's College, Oxford and received first class honours in classical moderations.

Housman became distracted, however, when he fell in love with his heterosexual roommate Moses Jackson. He unexpectedly failed his final exams, but managed to pass the final year and later took a position as clerk in the Patent Office in London for ten years.

During this time he studied Greek and Roman classics intensively, and in 1892 was appointed professor of Latin at University College, London. In 1911 he became professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, a post he held until his death. As a classicist, Housman gained renown for his editions of the Roman poets Juvenal, Lucan, and Manilius, as well as his meticulous and intelligent commentaries and his disdain for the unscholarly.

Housman only published two volumes of poetry during his life: A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). The majority of the poems in A Shropshire Lad, his cycle of 63 poems, were written after the death of Adalbert Jackson, Housman's friend and companion, in 1892. These poems center around themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death, and the patriotism of the common soldier. After the manuscript had been turned down by several publishers, Housman decided to publish it at his own expense, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students.

While A Shropshire Lad was slow to gain in popularity, the advent of war, first in the Boer War and then in World War I, gave the book widespread appeal due to its nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers. Several composers created musical settings for Housman's work, deepening his popularity.

Housman continued to focus on his teaching, but in the early 1920s, when his old friend Moses Jackson was dying, Housman chose to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson might read them. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, exhibit a range of subject and form much greater than the talents displayed in A Shropshire Lad. When Last Poems was published in 1922, it was an immediate success.

A third volume, More Poems, was released posthumously in 1936 by his brother, Laurence, as was an edition of Housman's Complete Poems (1939).

Despite acclaim as a scholar and a poet in his lifetime, Housman lived as a recluse, rejecting honors and avoiding the public eye. He died in 1936 in Cambridge.

I love Housman's poetry, particularly A Shropshire Lad. I used to have a wonderful CD with Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad (the songs, there is also an instrumental version), but it became to scratched to listen to and now it is impossible to find. We actually read quite a bit of Housman's poetry in grade eleven English, and I think I was the only one in the class to like his poetry (and was pretty much ridiculed for that as being the teacher's pet).

I haven't read his poetry since college - that means a long time ago.

I love his work. I've also read A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet and Tom Stoppard's lovely play The Invention of Love.

Ivan wrote: "I love his work. I've also read A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet and Tom Stoppard's lovely play The Invention of Love."

Ohhh, thanks for the links, I will definitely add these books to my swelling to-read list. I think that Housman is one of my favourite poets (in all languages I can read); he has made my favourites list.

Here dead we lie
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.

(One of my favorite, favorite poems).

My two favourites are "Loveliest of Trees" and "Is my Team Plowing."

IF - Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
and make allowance for their doubting too

.... y'all can fill in the rest

Thank you everyone for sharing these wonderful poems. I hadn't heard of A.E. Housman. I do not think I studied his work in my English classes. This is the kind of poetry I prefer, simple stanza exploring much more complex themes.

Not sure that I really knew much about him before I took a 20th-century poetry class many years ago.

My favorites were "To an Athlete Dying Young" and "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff".

I've seen "Out of Africa" a dozen times - and cry each time she reads "To an Athlete Dying Young" at the graveside.

But I liked it before I ever saw the movie.

Jan C wrote: "But I liked it before I ever saw the movie."

But the movie made me appreciate the fact that we actually go to read Housman in English class.

Housman wrote this about Oscar Wilde

Oh Who Is That Young Sinner
by A. E. Housman

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they’re taking him to prison for the color of his hair.

’Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time ’twas hanging for the color that it is;
Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable color of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he’s taken and a pretty price he’s paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they’ve pulled the beggar’s hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they’re taking him to justice for the color of his hair.

Now ’tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labor in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the color of his hair.

These are excellent. Simply excellent.

I know that there are "greater" poets, but Housman speaks to me - to my secret self.

One of my fondest school memories is getting a question on A.E. Housman on "Reach for the Top" one that stumped everyone except for me :-) After that (especially since it was the last question of the game and we just beat the other school's team by the slimmest of margins), no one made fun of the fact anymore that I enjoyed Housman's poetry.

That's called having the last laugh.

Ivan wrote: "That's called having the last laugh."

Yeah, it was very very sweet.

Ivan wrote: "I know that there are "greater" poets, but Housman speaks to me - to my secret self."

I know what you mean