Housman’s “The Chestnut Casts It’s Flambeux”
is a poem that begins with that first line in his
Last Poems, number IX.
The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.
There’s one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of our little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the
world.
It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they
crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool’s-errand to the grave.
Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.
If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other
breasts.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
The poem with the stressed
syllables underlined:
The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.
There’s one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of our little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the
world.
It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they
crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool’s-errand to the grave.
Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.
If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other
breasts.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Comments:
The language of this poem is over-the-top
mock-heroic, considering the topic of the
poem is simply a day in the country for a
pair of friends that is ruined by rain, and
who then go off to an inn or pub to have
a few beers instead. None of this is spelled
out in the poem, it is just implied. Whether
they were planning on going fishing or
hunting, or just going to ramble through
the countryside, remains unknown. The
language used in the poem is that of an
educated man and not of a careless youth,
and is so overblown that it provides the
sophisticated humour of this verse.
Rather than the elegy, that on face value
one might take the poem to be, it is a
defiant paean to comradeship in that face
of adversity.
My "singing" of the poem can be found
here:
