Her strong enchantments failing,

Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
O young man, O my slayer,
To-morrow you shall die.

O Queen of air and darkness,
I think tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
But you will die to-day.

Alfred Edward Housman

Alfred Edward Housman was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems "A Shropshire Lad." Housman's work is noted for its pessimism and preoccupation with death, youth, and the fleeting nature of beauty. His poetry, steeped in the English pastoral tradition, gained popularity during the Second Boer War and World War I. In addition to his poetry, Housman had a distinguished academic career, holding professorships at both University College London and the University of Cambridge.

Alfred Edward Housman

Illic Jacet

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XLI

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

The chestnut casts his flambeaux

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - VII

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Mariana

With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He come...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Forlorn

I.
He is fledI wish him dead
He that wrought my ruin
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.

II.
Who was witness of the crime?
Who shall now reveal it?
He is fled, or he is dead,
Marriage will conceal it . . .
In the night, in the night,
While the gloom is growing.

III.
Catherine, Catherine, in the night,
What is this youre dreaming?
There is laughter down in Hell
At your simple scheming . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the ghosts are fleeting.

IV.
You to place a hand in his
Like an honest womans,
You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . . .
In the night, O the night!
O the deathwatch b...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In midnights of November,

In midnights of November,
When Dead Mans 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.

Alfred Edward Housman

The chestnut casts his flambeaux

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; theres an end of May.

Theres 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 fools-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, n...

Alfred Edward Housman

A Dream of Fair Women

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
The Legend of Good Women, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars,
And I heard sounds of ins...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Mortem Meditare.

DYING THOUGHTS.


As Life's receding sunset fades
    And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
    And daylight ends.

Earth's span is drawing to its close,
    With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
    It feels in death.

The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
    The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
    Have disappeared.

And as a panoramic scroll
    The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
    Its tale reveals.

I stand before the dread, unknown,
    Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of foll...

Alfred Castner King