ever offer one chance of happiness (and perhaps, for every shade and persuasion, it does?):
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did
Housman suffered throughout his life, and therefore (and not surprisingly) his life became an unyielding attempt not to cooperate. The black horizon never shifted, and his emotional lot never mellowed.
He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
and went with half my life about my ways.
At his Wildean lowest, Oscar’s personal sadness had never slumped to such leaden fatigue; Housman suffered and accepted, death always close in his mind’s eye – but not regrettably so.
I did not lose my heart in summer’s even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.
The published poetry makes the personal torture just barely acceptable. The pain done to Housman allowed him to rise above the mediocre and to find the words that most of us need help in order to say. The price paid by Housman was a life alone; the righteous rhymer enduring each year unloved and unable to love:
Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over:
I only vex you the more I try.
All’s wrong that ever I’ve done and said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, here’s luck, goodbye.
But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or shame’s to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you
And whistle and I’ll be there.
It’s easy for me to imagine Housman sitting in a favorite chair by a barely flickering gas fire, the brain grinding long and hard, wanting to explain things in his own way, monumental loneliness on top of him, but with no one to tell. The written word is an attempt at completeness when there is no one impatiently awaiting you in a dimly lit bedroom – awaiting your tales of the day, as the healing hands of someone who knew turn to you and touch you, and you lose yourself so completely in another that you are momentarily delivered from yourself. Whispering across the pillow comes a kind voice that might tell you how to get out of certain difficulties, from someone who might mercifully detach you from your complications. When there is no matching of lives, and we live on a strict diet of the self, the most intimate bond can be with the words that we write:
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.
I ask myself if there is an irresponsible aspect in relaying thoughts of pain as inspiration, and I wonder whether Housman actually infected the sensitives further, and pulled them back into additional darkness. Surely it is true that everything in the imagination seems worse than it actually is – especially when one is alone and horizontal (in bed, as in the coffin). Housman was always alone – thinking himself to death, with no matronly wife to signal to the watching world that Alfred Edward was now quite alright – for isn’t this at least partly the aim of scoring a partner: to trumpet the mental all-clear to a world where how things seem is far more important than how things are ? Now snugly in eternity, Housman still occupies my mind. His best moments were in Art, and not in the cut and thrust of human relationships. Yet he said more about human relationships than those who managed to feast on them. You see, you can’t have it both ways.
Who on earth is Patrick MacGill, who in 1916 wrote:
Over the top is cold, matey –
You lie on the field alone.
Didn’t I love you of old, matey,
Dearer than
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did
Housman suffered throughout his life, and therefore (and not surprisingly) his life became an unyielding attempt not to cooperate. The black horizon never shifted, and his emotional lot never mellowed.
He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
and went with half my life about my ways.
At his Wildean lowest, Oscar’s personal sadness had never slumped to such leaden fatigue; Housman suffered and accepted, death always close in his mind’s eye – but not regrettably so.
I did not lose my heart in summer’s even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.
The published poetry makes the personal torture just barely acceptable. The pain done to Housman allowed him to rise above the mediocre and to find the words that most of us need help in order to say. The price paid by Housman was a life alone; the righteous rhymer enduring each year unloved and unable to love:
Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over:
I only vex you the more I try.
All’s wrong that ever I’ve done and said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, here’s luck, goodbye.
But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or shame’s to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you
And whistle and I’ll be there.
It’s easy for me to imagine Housman sitting in a favorite chair by a barely flickering gas fire, the brain grinding long and hard, wanting to explain things in his own way, monumental loneliness on top of him, but with no one to tell. The written word is an attempt at completeness when there is no one impatiently awaiting you in a dimly lit bedroom – awaiting your tales of the day, as the healing hands of someone who knew turn to you and touch you, and you lose yourself so completely in another that you are momentarily delivered from yourself. Whispering across the pillow comes a kind voice that might tell you how to get out of certain difficulties, from someone who might mercifully detach you from your complications. When there is no matching of lives, and we live on a strict diet of the self, the most intimate bond can be with the words that we write:
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.
I ask myself if there is an irresponsible aspect in relaying thoughts of pain as inspiration, and I wonder whether Housman actually infected the sensitives further, and pulled them back into additional darkness. Surely it is true that everything in the imagination seems worse than it actually is – especially when one is alone and horizontal (in bed, as in the coffin). Housman was always alone – thinking himself to death, with no matronly wife to signal to the watching world that Alfred Edward was now quite alright – for isn’t this at least partly the aim of scoring a partner: to trumpet the mental all-clear to a world where how things seem is far more important than how things are ? Now snugly in eternity, Housman still occupies my mind. His best moments were in Art, and not in the cut and thrust of human relationships. Yet he said more about human relationships than those who managed to feast on them. You see, you can’t have it both ways.
Who on earth is Patrick MacGill, who in 1916 wrote:
Over the top is cold, matey –
You lie on the field alone.
Didn’t I love you of old, matey,
Dearer than
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