Tell me Not Here, it Needs not saying..." by A.E. Housman.

This poem is found in Housman’s

Last Poems, it is number 40:  

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,

    What tune the enchantress plays

In aftermaths of soft September

    Or under blanching mays,

For she and I were long acquainted

    And I knew all her ways

On russet floors, by waters idle,

    The pine lets down the cone;

The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing

    In leafy dells alone;

And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn

    Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses

    The changing burnish heaves;

Or marshalled under moons of harvest

    Stand still all night the sheaves;

Or beeches strip in storms for winter

    And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,

   The countries I resign,

Where over elmy plains the highway

   Would mount the hills and shine,

And full of shade the pillared forest

   Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature,

   Will neither care not know

What stranger’s feet may find the meadow

   And trespass there and go,

Nor ask amid the dews of morning

   If they are mine or no.

The poem with the stressed

syllables underlined:

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,

    What tune the enchantress plays

In aftermaths of soft September

    Or under blanching mays,

For she and I were long acquainted

    And I knew all her ways

On russet floors, by waters idle,

    The pine lets down the cone;

The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing

    In leafy dells alone;

And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn

    Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses

    The changing burnish heaves;

Or marshalled under moons of harvest

    Stand still all night the sheaves;

Or beeches strip in storms for winter

    And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,

   The countries I resign,

Where over elmy plains the highway

   Would mount the hills and shine,

And full of shade the pillared forest

   Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature,

   Will neither care not know

What stranger’s feet may find the meadow

   And trespass there and go,

Nor ask amid the dews of morning

   If they are mine or no.

In this poem, nature is being 

compared to a heartless woman

the speaker loved in a rather

unconscious or elusive way.

The beautiful scenes of nature

invoked are experienced alone,

and create a feeling of sad

loneliness and longing. The

idea of an insane and cruel or

“witless” world is emphasised

by the image of a cuckoo that

that “shouts all day at nothing”.

© C.A. MacLennan 2025