  Poetry
This week: Exploring A. E. Housman Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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Be Still, My Soul, Be Still
by A. E. Housman
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,-- call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?
Alfred Edward Housman was born on the 26 of March, 1859 in Worcestershire, England. Housman was the eldest of seven children. He had a great fondness for his mother and the two were very close. When Housman was twelve years old his mother passed away. His grief over losing her fueled his early works. Housman went to Oxford where he fell in love with another student; unfortunately the young man could not return Housman’s affections. Housman was a great student but in the end he did not pass his final exam, and did not graduate.
In 1882 Housman started working as a clerk in the Patent Office in London. He worked there for ten years before several of his articles were noticed by scholars at the University College in London, and they offered his a professorship. In 1896 Housman published A Shropshire Lad. at his own expense. It took a while for this book to take off.
It was 1911, when Housman became a professor of Latin at Cambridge, where he taught for over thirty years. Housman had several poems over the years that he had written but never published. It was the failing health and eventual passing of a close friend, that lead him to publish them in Last Poems, in 1922. This book was a great success for Housman. Housman spent his life quietly; he did not want all the reorganization of being a poet and a scholar.
In 1933 A. E. Housman gave his last lecture The Name and Nature of Poetry. In this lecture a seventy-four year old Housman, argued that poetry for him is more about the emotional and physical aspect than an intellectual aspect. Housman died three years later on April 30, 1936. His brother, Laurence, released More Poems for publication in 1936 and Complete Poems in 1939 after his brother's death.
On Your Midnight Pallet Lying
by A. E. Housman
On your midnight pallet lying,
Listen, and undo the door:
Lads that waste the light in sighing
In the dark should sigh no more;
Night should ease a lover's sorrow;
Therefore, since I go to-morrow,
Pity me before.
In the land to which I travel,
The far dwelling, let me say--
Once, if here the couch is gravel,
In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another's
When it was not clay.
To An Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winners of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] are:
First Place:
Covenant of Dreams
Time's sand flows on, bearing autumn's arrival.
The air is crisp, filled with anticipation
as each living thing prepares for survival.
The hills fade, green to brown, in consolation
with the sky as warmth and succor ebb away,
yielding to change in final confirmation.
Too soon the eburnean clouds will give way
to the north winds, releasing their silver life,
leaving the world under a blanket of grey.
In a celebration of hope and not strife,
the trees make a covenant, in reds and gold,
and promises of new beginnings are rife.
Depleted and dry, each spark sleeps through the cold -
warmed by dreams of the new adventures foretold.
Second Place:
I wander the brown hills
of this dry dreary land
where no flower blooms
in the dull grey sand,
I see silver'd snow
on mountaintops high
where ancient palaces
once reached to the sky;
I look for adventure
in the crisp cold air,
but there's only barrenness
wherever I stare,
I find only sadness
wherever I roam
on this dead planet
so far from home;
Where are the beings
who built this fair place?
There is no answer,
for they're a dead race.
Third Place:
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Down hills on the dry grey sands,
Reflections of bright light bands,
Exposure of crisp brown shells,
Inside a slimy mollusk dwells,
The slimy animal put out her head,
Sees her partner on the sand bed,
Both plan to set out on adventure,
On water silver preying a creature,
A flashy fish popped out of the wave,
Gulped the partner as if in a crave,
The heart of the mollusk beat faster,
In a fright returned to her shell quieter.
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Poetry: September 29, 2010 Issue [#3990]
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