The Deserter

"What sound awakened me, I wonder,
For now tis dumb."
"Wheels on the road most like, or thunder:
Lie down; twas not the drum.:

"Toil at sea and two in haven
And trouble far:
Fly, crow, away, and follow, raven,
And all that croaks for war."

"Hark, I heard the bugle crying,
And where am I?
My friends are up and dressed and dying,
And I will dress and die."

"Oh love is rare and trouble plenty
And carrion cheap,
And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:
Lie down again and sleep."

"Reach me my belt and leave your prattle:
Your hour is gone;
But my day is the day of battle,
And that comes dawning on.

"They mow the field of man in season:
Farewell, my fair,
And, call it truth or call it treason,
Farewell the vows that were."

"Ay, false heart, forsake me lightly:
Tis like the brave.
They find no bed to joy in rightly
Before they find the grave.

"Their love is for their own undoing.
And east and west
They scour about the world a-wooing
The bullet in their breast.

"Sail away the ocean over,
Oh sail away,
And lie there with your leaden lover
For ever and a 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

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - L

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - I - 1887

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Lancer

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - LIX - The Isle Of Portland

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.

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

Grenadier

The Queen she sent to look for me,
The sergeant he did say,
Young man, a soldier will you be
For thirteen pence a day?

For thirteen pence a day did I
Take off the things I wore,
And I have marched to where I lie,
And I shall march no more.

My mouth is dry, my shirt is wet,
My blood runs all away,
So now I shall not die in debt
For thirteen pence a day.

To-morrow after new young men
The sergeant he must see,
For things will all be over then
Between the Queen and me.

And I shall have to bate my price,
For in the grave, they say,
Is neither knowledge nor device
Nor thirteen pence a day.

Alfred Edward Housman

A Desolate Shore

A desolate shore,
The sinister seduction of the Moon,
The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim,
From cloud to cloud along her beat,
Leering her battered and inveterate leer,
She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,
Her horrible old man,
Mumbling old oaths and warming
His villainous old bones with villainous talk -
The secrets of their grisly housekeeping
Since they went out upon the pad
In the first twilight of self-conscious Time:
Growling, hideous and hoarse,
Tales of unnumbered Ships,
Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance,
In some vile alley of the night
Waylaid and bludgeoned -
Dead.

Deep cellared in primeval ooze,
Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,
They lie where the lean water-worm
...

William Ernest Henley

The West

Beyond the moor and the mountain crest
- Comrade, look not on the west -
The sun is down and drinks away
From air and land the lees of day.

The long cloud and the single pine
Sentinel the ending line,
And out beyond it, clear and wan,
Reach the gulfs of evening on.

The son of woman turns his brow
West from forty countries now,
And, as the edge of heaven he eyes,
Thinks eternal thoughts, and sighs.

Oh wides the world, to rest or roam,
With change abroad and cheer at home,
Fights and furloughs, talk and tale,
Company and beef and ale.

But if I front the evening sky
Silent on the west look I,
And my comrade, stride for stride,
Paces silent at my side,

Comrade, look not on the west:
Twill have the heart out ...

Alfred Edward Housman

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XXXV

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

Alfred Edward Housman

The Alarm

(1803)
See "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON



In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
A harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he'd flown there
To his comely wife alone there,
While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
In these campaigning years.

'Twas time...

Thomas Hardy