
Alfred Edward Housman
Biography
Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England, on March 26, 1859, the eldest of seven children. A year after his birth, Housman’s family moved to nearby Bromsgrove, where the poet grew up and had his early education. In 1877, he attended St. John’s College, Oxford and received first class honours in classical moderations.
Housman became distracted, however, when he fell in love with his heterosexual roommate Moses Jackson. He unexpectedly failed his final exams, but managed to pass the final year and later took a position as clerk in the Patent Office in London for ten years.
During this time he studied Greek and Roman classics intensively, and in 1892 was appointed professor of Latin at University College, London. In 1911 he became professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, a post he held until his death. As a classicist, Housman gained renown for his editions of the Roman poets Juvenal, Lucan, and Manilius, as well as his meticulous and intelligent commentaries and his disdain for the unscholarly.
Housman only published two volumes of poetry during his life: A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). The majority of the poems in A Shropshire Lad, his cycle of 63 poems, were written after the death of Adalbert Jackson, Housman’s friend and companion, in 1892. These poems center around themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death, and the patriotism of the common soldier. After the manuscript had been turned down by several publishers, Housman decided to publish it at his own expense, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students.
While A Shropshire Lad was slow to gain in popularity, the advent of war, first in the Boer War and then in World War I, gave the book widespread appeal due to its nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers. Several composers created musical settings for Housman’s work, deepening his popularity.
Housman continued to focus on his teaching, but in the early 1920s, when his old friend Moses Jackson was dying, Housman chose to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson might read them. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, exhibit a range of subject and form much greater than the talents displayed in A Shropshire Lad. When Last Poems was published in 1922, it was an immediate success.
A third volume, More Poems, was released posthumously in 1936 by his brother, Laurence, as was an edition of Housman’s Complete Poems (1939).
Despite acclaim as a scholar and a poet in his lifetime, Housman lived as a recluse, rejecting honors and avoiding the public eye. He died on April 30, 1936, in Cambridge.
Poems by Alfred Edward Housman
- 1887
- A Shropshire Lad, Ii
- Along The Field As We Came By
- An Epitaph
- As Through The Wild Green Hills Of Wyre
- Astronomy
- Be Still, My Soul, Be Still
- Bredon Hill
- Bring, In This Timeless Grave To Throw
- Could Man Be Drunk Forever
- Crossing Alone The Nighted Ferry
- Diffugere Nives
- Eight O’Clock
- Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries
- Far In A Western Brookland
- Farewell To A Name And Number
- Farewell To Barn And Stack And Tree
- For My Funeral
- Fragment Of A Greek Tragedy
- From Far, From Eve And Morning
- Good Creatures Do You Love Your Lives
- Goodnight
- He Would Not Stay With Me And Who Can Wonder
- Hell’s Gate
- Her Strong Enchantments Failing
- Here Dead We Lie
- Ho, Everyone That Thirsteth
- How Clear, How Lovely Bright
- Hughley Steeple
- I Hoed And Trenched And Weeded
- I: Easter Hymn
- If By Chance Your Eye Offend You
- If Truth In Hearts That Perish
- In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad
- In Valleys Of Springs And Rivers
- Into My Heart An Air That Kills
- Is My Team Ploughing
- It Nods And Curtseys And Recovers
- Lancer
- Loitering With A Vacant Eye
- Look Not In My Eyes, For Fear
- Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now
- Lx: Now Hollow Fires Burn Out To Black
- March
- Now Dreary Dawns The Eastern Light
- Now Hollow Fires Burn Out To Black
- O Why Do You Walk (A Parody)
- Oh Fair Enough Are Sky And Plain
- Oh Stay At Home, My Lad
- Oh Who Is That Young Sinner
- Oh, See How Thick The Goldcup Flowers
- Oh, When I Was In Love With You
- On Moonlit Heath And Lonesome Bank
- On The Idle Hill Of Summer
- On Wenlock Edge The Wood’s In Trouble
- On Your Midnight Pallet Lying
- Others, I Am Not The First
- R L S
- Reveille
- Revolution
- Say, Lad, Have You Things To Do?
- Shot? So Quick, So Clean An Ending?
- Soldier from the wars returning
- Spring Morning
- Stars
- Tell Me Not Here, It Needs Not Saying
- Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff
- The Carpenter’s Son
- The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux
- The Day Of Battle
- The Fairies Break Their Dances
- The Grizzly Bear
- The Half-Moon Westers Low My Love
- The Immortal Part
- The Isle Of Portland
- The Lads In Their Hundreds
- The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man
- The Lent Lily
- The Merry Guide
- The Mill Stream Now That Noises Cease
- The New Mistress
- The Night Is Freezing Fast
- The Nonsense Verse
- The Rain It Streams On Stone And Hillock
- The Rainy Pleiads Wester
- The Recruit
- The Sloe Was Lost In Flower
- The Stars Have Not Dealt Me The Worst They Could Do
- The Stinging Nettle
- The Street Sounds To The Soldiers’ Tread
- The True Lover
- The Welsh Marches
- The Winds Out Of The West Land Blow
- The World Goes None The Lamer
- There Pass The Careless People
- Think No More, Lad
- This Time Of Year A Twelvemonth Past
- Tis Five Years Since, An End Said I
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town
- To An Athlete Dying Young
- Twice A Week The Winter Thorough
- Wake Not For The World-Heard Thunder
- Westward On The High-Hilled Plains
- When First My Way To Fair I Took
- When I Came Last To Ludlow
- When I Was One-And-Twenty
- When I Watch The Living Meet
- When I Would Muse In Boyhood
- When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow
- When The Eye Of Day Is Shut
- When The Lad For Longing Sighs
- White In The Moon The Long Road Lies
- With Rue My Heart Is Laden
- You Smile Upon Your Friend To-Day