The Chestnut Casts it's Flambeaux (by A.E. Housman).

 

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:

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube

© C.A. MacLennan 2024

The Way Through the Woods (by Rudyard Kipling)

"The Way Through the Woods" by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring -dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the

trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet, 

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods….

But there is no road through the woods.

The poem with the stressed

syllables underlined:

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring -dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the

trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet, 

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods.

But there is no road through the woods.

Notes:

        The structure of this poem is very

interesting. Poems of this complicated

structure are typically not long. Long

poems typically have a much more 

simple structure: couplets of alternatively

rhyming lines. In this poem, the 2nd and 

4th line rhyme, then an unrhyming line

separates it from the next part of the poem

in which the 6th, 8th, 9th and 11th line 

rhyme with each other. The two verses

are essentially three quatrains squashed

together, with an extra line at the end.

Within the third and 7th line there is an

internal rhyme: rain/gain, neath/heath,

cools/pools, beat/feet. Internal rhymes

like this are a feature of Irish Gaelic

poetry and some Irish folk songs in

English. I think that it is very likely

that Kipling heard such Irish folk songs

from Irishmen in the British army. 

        The poem conveys a feeling of 

nostalgia for the past. Namely, how you

can remember a thing so clearly that 

does not exist anymore, when you

return to where you experienced it. In

this case, the road through a woods. 

The poet says: "yet, if you enter the

woods... you will hear the beat of a

horse's feet". By "you" he means

himself. He can still imagine those 

things, because he heard them once;

anyone was did not would not hear

them. Nostalgia for the past has

always been a popular subject for

poems and songs until recently. The

Beatles' "In my Life" and Van 

Morrison's "Brown-eyed Girl" are

ridiculous songs by young men

yearning for their not-too-long-ago

past, but clearly they are following

a convention of doing so. 

        

        Everyone feels nostalgic for

places that do not exist anymore or

are not the same, one almost feels

like a ghost or a visitor from

another planet, when you revisit

them. This is the eerie feeling

expressed in this poem. The last extra

line is particularly effective in 

creating the haunting and dramatic

feeling that the poet/speaker is

trying to convince himself that

the road is gone, but he cannot

believe it.

        "The swish of a skirt in the dew"

appears to be interpreted by most

people to be a reference to a 

to a female's skirt, perhaps a

female riding a horse. It seems to me,

however, that it refers to the skirt of

a wagon or carriage, The words

 "horse's feet" and "cantering through"

 refer to a horse, not a woman, and

seem all part of the same thought. 

The skirt of a car, is that part below

the door, so I assume that that might

might be what some people called the 

lower part of a carriage or cart too. 

Or it may refer to a decorative skirt

put over a cart or carriage for some

celebration. 

        The "road" in question is surely

just two ribbons of bare earth created

by the constant passage of wheeled

vehicles, of a sort that you see in the

country. 

You can hear and see me reciting 

this poem at: 

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube