For standing artless as the air,
And candid as the skies,

She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end,

Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.

She looked a little wistfully,
Then went her sunshine way:
The sea's eye had a mist on it,
And the leaves fell from the day.

She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me

The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,
And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.

66

FROM 'ODE TO THE SETTING SUN"

How came the entombed tree a light-bearer,
Though sunk in lightless lair?
Friend of the forgers of earth,

Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic,
Clasped in the arms of the forces Titanic

Which rock like a cradle the girth

Of the ether-hung world;

Swart son of the swarthy mine,

When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds

How is his countenance half-divine,

Like thee in thy sanguine weeds?

Thou gavest him his light,

Though sepultured in night

Beneath the dead bones of a perished world;

Over his prostrate form

Though cold, and heat, and storm,

The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled.

Who made the splendid rose

Saturate with purple glows;

Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press
Whence the wind vintages

Gushes of warmèd fragrance richer far

Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats? Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, With dusky cheeks burnt red

She sways her heavy head,

Drunk with the must of her own odorousness;
While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats
Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush.
Who girt dissolvèd lightnings in the grape?
Summered the opal with an Irised flush?
Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape,
And huest the daffodilly,

Yet who hast snowed the lily,

And her frail sister, whom the waters name,
Dost vestal-vesture 'mid the blaze of June,
Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moon
Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame?
Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam

O'er all delight and dream,
Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance:

And like a jocund maid

In garland flowers arrayed,

Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance.

TO A SNOWFLAKE

What heart could have thought you? -
Past our devisal

(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,

From argentine vapour?

66

God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,

To lust of his mind:

Thou couldst not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost.”

A. E. HOUSMAN

A. E. Housman was born March 26, 1859, and, after a classical education, he was, for ten years, a Higher Division Clerk in H. M. Patent Office. Later in life, he became a teacher.

Up to 1922 Housman had published only one volume of original verse, but that volume, A Shropshire Lad (1896), is known wherever modern English poetry is read. Underneath his ironies, there is a rustic humor that has many subtle variations. From a melodic standpoint, A Shropshire Lad is a collection of exquisite, haunting and almost perfect songs. After a silence of almost twenty-six years, a second volume, significantly entitled Last Poems, appeared in 1922. Here, once more, we have the note of pessimism sung in a jaunty rhythm and an incongruously jolly key. The Shropshire Lad lives

again to pipe his mournful tunes of betrayal, lovesick lads, deserted girls and suicides with an enviable simplicity and an almost flawless command of his instrument.

Housman has been a professor of Latin since 1892 and, besides his immortal set of lyrics, has edited Juvenal and the books of Manilius.

REVEILLÉ

Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
"Who'll beyond the hills away?"

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather

Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.

WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY

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,
66 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.

"ON THE IDLE HILL OF SUMMER'
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads, all dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.