This is because the final two books were posthumous collections put together by Housman's brother and it is highly unlikely that Housman himself would have approved of this. However, there are actually four books of poems collected in this one volume and they are not of equal quality. Sophocles, 'Oedipus Coloneus' (lines 1211-48)Īppendix: The Name and Nature of Poetry: The Leslie Stephen Lecture, Delivered by A. Aeschylus, 'Septem Contra Thebas' (lines 848-60) 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists. 'The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do. '-They shall have breath that never were. 'He would not stay for me and who can wonder. 'Ask me no more, for fear I should reply. 'I did not lose my heart in summer's even. 'Here dead lie we because we did not choose. 'Shake hands, we shall never be friends give over. 'He, standing hushed, a pace or two apart. 'To stand up straight and tread the turning mill. 'Like mine, the veins of these that slumber.

'When green buds hang in the elm like dust. 'The rain, it streams on stone and hillock. 'The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers. There are several biographies of Housman, and a The Housman Society

In some of the asperity and directness in lyrics and also scholarship, Housman defended common sense with a sarcastic wit that helped to make him widely feared. Housman the poet produced lyrics that express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style.

He published a five-volume critical edition, the definitive text, of his work on ' Astronomica' of Manilus from 1903 to 1930. In 1911, he took the Kennedy professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life.Īs a scholar, Housman concentrated on Latin. After a decade with such his reputation, he ably obtain a position at University College London in 1902. Frustrated, he gained at job as a patent clerk but continued his research in the classical studies and published a variety of well-regarded papers. The eldest of seven children and a gifted student, Housman won a scholarship to Oxford, where he performed well but for various reasons neglected philosophy and ancient history subjects that failed to pique his interest and consequently failed to gain a degree. To his fellow noted classicists, his critical editing of Manilius earned him enduring fame. A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922) apparently published works of British poet and scholar Alfred Edward Housman, brother of Laurence Housman and Clemence Housman.

A shropshire lad full text