The fairies break their dances

The fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn,
And up from India glances
The silver sail of dawn.

The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders whats to pay.

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" - VII

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Now dreary dawns the eastern light,

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XLVII - The Carpenter's Son

Alfred Edward Housman, Simple Poetry

Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XXVII

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

Fancys Knell

When lads were home from labour
At Abdon under Clee,
A man would call his neighbor
And both would send for me.
And where the light in lances
Across the mead was laid,
There to the dances
I fetched my flute and played.

Ours were idle pleasures,
Yet oh, content we were,
The young to wind the measures,
The old to heed the air;
And I to lift with playing
From tree and tower and steep
The light delaying,
And flute the sun to sleep.

The youth toward his fancy
Would turn his brow of tan,
And Tom would pair with Nancy
And Dick step off with Fan;
The girl would lift her glances
To his, and both be mute:
Well went the dances
At evening to the flute.

Wenlock Edge was umbered,
And bright was Abdon Burf,
A...

Alfred Edward Housman

When summers end is nighing

When summers end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of t...

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

The Fairies Dancing

I heard along the early hills,
    Ere yet the lark was risen up,
Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills
    The night-dew of the bramble-cup, -
I heard the fairies in a ring
    Sing as they tripped a lilting round
Soft as the moon on wavering wing.
    The starlight shook as if with sound,
As if with echoing, and the stars
    Prankt their bright eyes with trembling gleams
While red with war the gusty Mars
    Rained upon earth his ruddy beams.
He shone alone, low down the West,
    While I, behind a hawthorn-bush,
Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed
    The fires of the morning flush.
Till, as a mist, their beauty died,
    Their singing shrill and fainter grew;
And daylight tremulous and wide
    Flooded the moorland through and through;

Walter De La Mare

When first my way to fair I took

When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.

Now times are altered:    if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and heres the fair,
But wheres the lost young man?

- To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long tis like to be.

Alfred Edward Housman