Easter Hymn (by A.E. Housman).

This is poem number 1 of Housman's

collection: More Poems.:

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in

vain,

Not even in dreams behold how dark

and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night

The hate you died to quench and could

but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

The poem with the stressed

syllables underlined:

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in

vain,

Not even in dreams behold how dark

and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night

The hate you died to quench and could

but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

Comments:

I must confess to hating this one

particular poem of Housman for a longtime.

Besides the difficulty of figuring out the

rhythm (which is unique in Housman’s

oeuvre), the doubting of Jesus’s resurrection

always bothered me. Reading such skepticism 

about the resurrection from someone you 

have respect as an artist makes it harder to

brush off. When I was younger I seemed to

believe that things that were published and

available in book form were somehow given

a seal of legitimacy by the thinking world,

and the consensus of the same. In case others

out there still Feel a similar feeling, I would

like to state here that I disapprove of the

sentiment expressed in this poem. I do not

think that it is wrong to think such things

And I might have even though such a thing 

myself, but it is far common a sentiment and

on that grounds alone it deserves a rebuttal

or at least to be commented on. This, of course,

might not even be the poet’s genuine

feeling about the resurrection, he may be

expressing this view through a character in

his mind, but the despairing hopeless tone of

much of his work argues against that view. 

© C.A. MacLennan, 2024

The Oracles (by A.E. Housman).

 

This poem is found in Housman’s

Last Poems, it is poem number 25:  

’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on

high Dodona mountain

   When winds were in the oakenshaws and

all the cauldrons tolled,

And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside

the singing fountain,

   And echoes list to silence now where gods

told lies of old.

I took my question to the shrine that has not

ceased from speaking,

   The heart within, that tells the truth and

tells it twice as plain;

And from the cave of oracles I heard the

priestess shrieking

   That she and I should surely die and never

live again.

Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound

good sense I think it;

   But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth

your mouth no more.

’Tis true there’s better boose then brine, but

he that drowns must drink it;

   And oh, my lass, the news is news that men

have heard before.

The King with half the East at heel is

marched from lands of morning;

    Their fighters drink the rivers up, their

shafts benight the air.

And he that stands will die for nought, and

home there’s no returning.

    The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down

and combed their hair.

The poem with the stressed

syllables underlined:

’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on

high Dodona mountain

   When winds were in the oakenshaws and

all the cauldrons tolled,

And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside

the singing fountain,

   And echoes list to silence now where gods

told lies of old.

I took my question to the shrine that has not

ceased from speaking,

   The heart within, that tells the truth and

tells it twice as plain;

And from the cave of oracles I heard the

priestess shrieking

   That she and I should surely die and never

live again.

Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound

good sense I think it;

   But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth

your mouth no more.

’Tis true there’s better boose then brine, but

he that drowns must drink it;

   And oh, my lass, the news is news that men

have heard before.

The King with half the East at heel is

marched from lands of morning;

    Their fighters drink the rivers up, their

shafts benight the air.

And he that stands will die for nought, and

home there’s no returning.

    The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down

and combed their hair.

Analysis:

The unstressed syllables create a

galloping rhythm similar to some of

Swinburne’s work. The long lines are the

result of allowing to lines of 2 stressed

lines to stand together to complete a

more detailed thought in the verse than

otherwise with less words in shorter

lines. Kipling and Crabb favour this

form, though in is often difficult to

fit on a page these longer lines.

The bit about “their shafts be-

night the air” refers to the army of Xeres

(the king with half the East at heel)

being so numerous that when his archers

let loose their arrows, the sky went

black. The “cauldrons” were hung in

the branches of trees. The sense of the 

poem is the nobility of acting cool and

collected in the face of unavoidable

doom. 

Other poems in this style by

Housman are: "Be Still, my Soul, be Still"

(A Shropshire Lad IXLIII), "Oh sick I am

to see you"/The New Mistress (A

Shropshire Lad XXXIV), "The Lads in

their Hundreds" (A Shrophire Lad XXIII,

and "Oh, who is that young sinner?"

(Additional Poems XVIII).

© C.A. MacLennan 2024

I will be posting a of video of me singing

this poem soon at:

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube

William Shakespeare's Sonnet #116

 

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, this

number 116.:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his

height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy

lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and

weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

    If this be error and upon me proved,

    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The poem with the stressed

syllables underlined:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his

height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy

lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and

weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

    If this be error and upon me proved,

    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

© C.A. MacLennan 2024

You can see videos of me reading poems at:

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube