Last Poems (Housman)

by Alfred Edward Housman

For works with similar titles, see Last Poems.

Last Poems

Uniform with this Volume

A Shropshire Lad

By

A. E. Housman

$1.50

Authorised Edition

Henry Holt and Company

Last Poems

 

By
A. E. Housman

 

 

New York
Henry Holt and Company
MDCCCCXXII

Copyright, 1922
By Henry Holt and Company

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Printed November, 1922

 

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

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 see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation. About a quarter of this matter belongs to the April of the present year, but most of it to dates between 1895 and 1910.

September 1922

Contents

No.		Page
	We'll to the woods no more (not listed in original)	10
I.	Beyond the moor and mountain crest	11
II.	As I gird on for fighting	14
III.	Her strong enchantments failing	15
IV.	Oh hard is the bed they have made him	16
V.	The Queen she sent to look for me	17
VI.	I 'listed at home for a lancer	19
VII.	In valleys green and still	21
VIII.	Soldier from the wars returning	23
IX.	The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers	24
X.	Could man be drunk for ever	26
XI.	Yonder see the morning blink	27
XII.	The laws of God, the laws of man	28
XIII.	What sound awakened me, I wonder	30
XIV.	The night my father got me	33
XV.	He stood, and heard the steeple	35
XVI.	Star and coronal and bell	36
XVII.	The Wain upon the northern steep	38
XVIII.	The rain, it streams on stone and hillock	39
XIX.	In midnights of November	41
XX.	The night is freezing fast	43
XXI.	The fairies break their dances	44
XXII.	The sloe was lost in flower	45
XXIII.	In the morning, in the morning	46
XXIV.	He is here, Urania's son	47
XXV.	'Tis mute, the word they went to hear	50
XXVI.	The half-moon westers low, my love	52
XXVII.	The sigh that heaves the grasses	53
XXVIII.	Now dreary dawns the eastern light	54
XXIX.	Wake not for the world-heard thunder	55
XXX.	I walked alone and thinking	57
XXXI.	Onward led the road again	59
XXII.	When I would muse in boyhood	65
XXIII.	When the eye of day is shut	66
XXIV.	The orchards half the way	67
XXXV.	When first my way to fair I took	69
XXXVI.	West and away the wheels of darkness roll	70
XXXVII.	These, in the day when heaven was falling	71
XXXVIII.	Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough	72
XXXIX.	When summer's end is nighing	73
XL.	Tell me not here, it needs not saying	75
XLI.	When lads were home from labour	77