Bedtime Storie--uh, Poems

the book on my nightstand

I first heard of A. E. Housman (1859-1936) back at Hiram High School (R.I.P.), my senior year (1961-62), when our English teacher, Mrs. Davis, required us to memorize his "When I Was Young and Twenty" (see below). I don't remember how I did on the quiz, but, given my "study habits" at the time, I'm sure I got at least a C on it. (I do know it now--and cold.)

Anyway, when I got into my Latest Madness (memorizing scads of poems) a couple of decades ago, I tried to shove back into my memory some poems I had learned (more or less) earlier in my life, and so it was that I recovered "A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "If You Were Coming in the Fall," and "When I Was Young and Twenty" (and there were others).

I liked the poem, and so I bought the book you see pictured above (yes, that is our copy), paged through it, found some others I liked, too, and memorized them--"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"and "Into my heart an air that kills."*

I  also recently read a great book about Housman and his world--Housman Country: Into the Heart of England (2017), by Peter Parker (no, not that Peter Parker!).

And then Joyce and I began a (fairly regular) just-before-lights-out routine: I read aloud to her a poem (or two) from the Housman collection. (We are now on p. 148 of 247 pp. of text.)

Some of the poems--surprise, surprise--are better than others. Many are sad, dealing with the deaths of youth. Dealing with war. Dealing with lost love. Lost time. The rural past glows on most of the pages. Sometimes, after a particularly grim poem, Joyce and I will look at each other and (silently) ask: Why are we doing this?

But then we'll come across one like the one I read to her last night, number XXXIX from Last Poems. (I've reproduced it below "When I Was Young and Twenty.")

And then we look at each other with different eyes. As we do the world the next morning ...

*the volume contains A Shropshire Lad (1896),  Last Poems (1922), More Poems (1936),, and two groups of uncollected
poems--"Additional Poems," and "Translations" (Housman was a classical scholar).

**

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,

“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.

XXXIX (from Last Poems)

When summer's end is nighing

  And skies at evening cloud,

I muse on change and fortune

  And all the feats I vowed

  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset

  Would lose the slanted ray,

And I would climb the beacon

  That looked to Wales away

  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven

  The hues of evening died;

Night welled through lane and hollow

  And hushed the countryside,

  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall

  In converse high would stand,

Late, till the west was ashen

  And darkness hard at hand,

  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy

  The lessening day might close,

But air of other summers

  Breathed from beyond the snows,

  And I had hope of those.

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.

So here's an end of roaming

  On eves when autumn nighs:

The ear too fondly listens

  For summer's parting sighs,

  And then the heart replies.