Six Poets (7 page)

And nought to help it in this dull head:

Shake hands, here's luck, good-bye.

But if you come to a road where danger

Or guilt or anguish 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.

In the years that followed, the two friends met from time to time and Housman wrote regularly – but in the words of Auden's poem, ‘Who's Who', Jackson ‘answered some of his long, marvellous letters, but kept none'.

(
from
More Poems)

Because I liked you better

Than suits a man to say,

It irked you, and I promised

To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us

We parted, stiff and dry;

‘Good-bye,' said you, ‘forget me.'

‘I will, no fear,' said I.

If here, where clover whitens

The dead man's knoll, you pass,

And no tall flower to meet you

Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming

The heart no longer stirred,

And say the lad that loved you

Was one that kept his word.

Girls, it has to be said, only figure in Housman as an occasion for the deaths of boys. Their place in the scheme of things is to make lads unhappy so that they go off to war or hang themselves. This is sometimes quite difficult to take, and the word ‘lads' is quite difficult to take now too, when its usage is largely confined to football managers: ‘The lads played a blinder.' Jokes about Housman are easy to make, and with his simple forms and limited subject matter, his poetry has always been an easy target for parody, as in these verses by Hugh Kingsmill.

What, still alive at twenty-two,

A clean, upstanding chap like you?

Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,

Slit your girl's, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won't be glad,

When they come to hang you, lad:

But bacon's not the only thing

That's cured by hanging from a string.

The next poem, a dialogue between a soldier and his sweetheart, owes something to Hardy, whom Housman admired.

(
from
Last Poems)

‘What sound awakened me, I wonder,

For now 'tis dumb.'

‘Wheels on the road most like, or thunder:

Lie down; 'twas not the drum.'

Toil at sea and two in haven

And trouble far:

Fly, crow, away, and follow, raven,

And all that croaks for war.

‘Hark, I heard the bugle crying,

And where am I?

My friends are up and dressed and dying,

And I will dress and die.'

‘Oh love is rare and trouble plenty

And carrion cheap,

And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:

Lie down again and sleep.'

‘Reach me my belt and leave your prattle:

Your hour is gone;

But my day is the day of battle,

And that comes dawning on.

‘They mow the field of man in season:

Farewell, my fair,

And, call it truth or call it treason,

Farewell the vows that were.'

‘Ay, false heart, forsake me lightly:

'Tis like the brave.

They find no bed to joy in rightly

Before they find the grave.

‘Their love is for their own undoing,

And east and west

They scour about the world a-wooing

The bullet to their breast.

‘Sail away the ocean over,

Oh sail away,

And lie there with your leaden lover

For ever and a day.'

Austere though Housman was, he could unbend with women and children, perhaps because, to him, they didn't really count. I'm not sure that his poems actually appeal to women; certainly I couldn't find any women critics who have written about them. When Housman was teaching at University College London his elaborate sarcasm would often reduce his women students to tears. Well, this they could just about take, but what really upset them was that, the following week, Housman could not remember which ones he had offended or even tell any of them apart.

A Shropshire Lad
was written in 1894 and 1895. In the latter year, Housman wrote a much more explicit poem which was not included in the collection and was only published after his death. 1895 may have been the year of the publication of Housman's poems, but it was also the year of the trials of Oscar Wilde.

(
from
Additional Poems)

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?

And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?

And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?

Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;

In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;

Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair

For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid

To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;

But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for all the world to see and stare,

And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet

And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,

And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare

He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.

It's hard to imagine two writers more different than Housman and Wilde, but as one critic has said: ‘From Wenlock Edge, one can see as far as Reading Gaol.' Housman saw it too and, after Wilde's release, he sent him a copy of
A Shropshire Lad
. He used to say with some pride that Robert Ross, Wilde's friend, had learned a few of the poems by heart and recited them to Wilde while he was still in gaol.

The occasion for Wilde's poem
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
was the hanging of a young soldier who had murdered his sweetheart, a situation Housman would have found familiar. Like Hardy, he was fascinated by hanging. As a boy, Hardy had seen a woman hanged and it haunted him all his life, and in Housman, too, the gallows are always turning up.