This poem is found in Housman’s
Last Poems, it is number 19:
In midnights of November,
When Dead Man’s Fair is nigh,
And danger in the valley,
And anger in the sky,
Around the huddling homesteads
The leafless timber roars,
And the dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
Oh, yonder faltering fingers
Are hands I used to hold;
Their false companion drowses
And leaves them in the cold.
Oh, to the bed of ocean,
To Africk and to Ind,
I will arise and follow
Along the rainy wind.
The night goes out and under
With all its train forlorn;
Hues in the east assemble
And cocks crow up the morn.
The living are the living
And dead the dead will stay,
And I will sort with comrades
That face the beam of day.
The poem with the stressed
syllables underlined:
In midnights of November,
When Dead Man’s Fair is nigh,
And danger in the valley,
And anger in the sky,
Around the huddling homesteads
The leafless timber roars,
And the dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
Oh, yonder faltering fingers
Are hands I used to hold;
Their false companion drowses
And leaves them in the cold.
Oh, to the bed of ocean,
To Africk and to Ind,
I will arise and follow
Along the rainy wind.
The night goes out and under
With all its train forlorn;
Hues in the east assemble
And cocks crow up the morn.
The living are the living
And dead the dead will stay,
And I will sort with comrades
That face the beam of day.
Analysis:
The living in this poem are called "the
dying". This is a kind of scarier version
of "Is my team ploughing?" with the
false living lover drowsing/sleeping.
It is still more exactly another version
of "The True Lover, except from a
more objective viewpoint. The fourth
verse is the most poetic but most puzzling.
Is it referring to the living lover goin
spiritually to the dead lover? The sea
bed, Africa and Indian seem to be places
a soldier or sailor would end up dead.
The night's "train forlorn" are the ghosts
that follow it.
© C.A. MacLennan 2025
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