E. Housman
E. Housman
fellows trouble
This is for all ill-treated fellows - Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not
cheers death silence sounds stopped worse
And silence sounds no worse than cheers / After death has stopped the ears.
lads lays thinking
Think no more; 'tis only thinking / Lays lads underground.
coloured hear high love morning sunday
Here of a Sunday morning / My love and I would lie, / And see the coloured counties, / And hear the larks so high / About us in the sky.
bright carry die glory lads
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, / The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
cambridge fall greater poet scholar seen strange wordsworth
Cambridge has seen many strange sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk, it has seen Porson sober. I am a greater scholar than Wordsworth and I am a greater poet than Porson. So I fall betwixt and between.
right-words
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
humorous hands world
Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
drinking men way
To justify God's ways to man.
asylums cambridge
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
poison body belief
Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.
strong heaven earth
Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
humorous trouble ill
This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not.
drinking food book
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.