A Little Book Of Poems

Sometimes I just like the feel of a book even without knowing what's inside. That's the way it was with this one, which I found in a charity shop on the Cowley Road in Oxford. It's a tiny volume, and it's old enough to have acquired a soft, worn, antiquated texture. I picked it up, held it in my hand, and pondered its disarmingly unequivocal title. These were A.E. Housman's last poems.

The preface within made it even more poignant: "I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more. I can no longer expect to be revisited by the continuous excitement under which in the early months of 1895 I wrote the greater part of my other book, nor indeed could I well sustain it if it came, and it is best that what I have written should be printed while I am here to see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation..."

That sounded like a good-bye if ever I heard one. And so honest. Here was a man who believed his creative days were over and did not expect to be inspired again. He seemed sad and resigned, dispatching this last little missive into the world. What had happened to him? Had something in particular broken his heart, or was it simply a matter of growing old and weary?

Housman was best known for A Shropshire Lad, a collection of poems published in 1896 that dealt with themes of pastoral life, fleeting youth (in the land of lost content/I see it shining plain/the happy highways where I went/ and cannot come again), unrequited love, and early death.

The book developed widespread appeal in the years that followed, partly because of its references to brave young soldiers fallen in battle:

Too full already is the grave

Of fellows that were good and brave

And died because they were.

Perusing Last Poems, I found the same melancholy tone: death, dashed hopes and disillusionment, and nostalgia for what is gone:

They came and were and are not

And come no more anew

And all the years and seasons

That ever can ensue

Must now be worse and few.

Whew.

Or there's this one, another ditty for the discouraged:

Yonder see the morning blink:

The sun is up and up must I,

To wash and dress and eat and think,

And work, and God knows why.

Oh often have I washed and dressed

And what's to show for all my pain?

Let me lie abed and rest:

Ten thousand times I've done my best,

And all's to do again.

"Housman is one of my heroes and always has been," wrote John Berryman. "He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but an absolutely marvelous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar."

He was a brilliant scholar of Greek and Roman classics, well-known for his translations and commentary, and a professor of Latin at Cambridge. He declined many honors and died a recluse. But poetry was crucial to him. "If a line of poetry strays into my memory," he said, "my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act."

Browsing through this little book of poems, what I felt was mostly a kind of sadness, and there was something so personal about it, I almost wished that I could comfort him. It's amazing how much a book can hold of its writer's soul, reaching out to touch us across decades and centuries.

But there was also wisdom in here, spirit in the candor, and this blunt advice:

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.