Last Poems

Last Poems (1922) is the second and last of the two volumes of poems which A. E. Housman published during his lifetime. The first, and better-known, is A Shropshire Lad (1896).

Background

Housman was an emotionally withdrawn man whose closest friend Moses Jackson had been his roommate when he was at Oxford in 1877–82. In the 1920s, when Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman compiled forty-two previously unpublished poems into a volume entitled Last Poems, for him to read. The introduction to the volume explains his rationale:

I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more. I can no longer expect to be revisited by the continuous excitement under which in the early months of 1895 I wrote the greater part of my first book, nor indeed could I well sustain it if it came; and it is best that what I have written should be printed while I am here to see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation. About a quarter of this matter belongs to the April of the present year, but most of it to dates between 1895 and 1910.

— September 1922

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

This poem, No. XXXVII in the collection, is perhaps the best known:

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

The poem could relate to many bodies of troops throughout the ages. It has been argued, however, that Housman was referring specifically to the old professional British Army, which was destroyed in France during 1914 when it was the B.E.F. at the outset of World War I.

The poems

The 42 poems in Last Poems are listed below.^[1] All the poems are identified by their first lines; the titles, where given (they are in capital letters), are Housman's own.

- "We'll to the woods no more" I THE WEST, "Beyond the moor and mountain crest" II "As I gird on for fighting" III "Her strong enchantments failing" IV ILLIC JACET, "Oh hard is the bed they have made him" V GRENADIER, "The Queen she sent to look for me" VI LANCER, "I 'listed at home for a lancer" VII "In valleys green and still" VIII "Soldier from the wars returning" IX "The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers" X "Could man be drunk for ever" XI "Yonder see the morning blink" XII "The laws of God, the laws of man" XIII THE DESERTER, "'What sound wakened me, I wonder'" XIV THE CULPRIT, "The night my father got me" XV EIGHT O’CLOCK, "He stood, and heard the steeple" XVI SPRING MORNING, "Star and coronal and bell" XVII ASTRONOMY, "The Wain upon the northern steep" XVIII "The rain, it streams on stone and hillock" XIX "In midnights of November" XX "The night is freezing fast" XXI The fairies break their dances"

XXII "The sloe was lost in flower" XXIII "In the morning, in the morning" XXIV EPITHALAMIUM, "He is here, Urania's son" XXV THE ORACLES, "'Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain" XXVI "The half-moon westers low, my love" XXVII "The sigh that heaves the grasses" XXVIII "Now dreary dawns the eastern light" XXIX "Wake not for the world-heard thunder" XXX SINNER’S RUE, "I walked alone and thinking" XXXI HELL’S GATE, "Onward led the road again" XXXII "When I would muse in boyhood" XXXIII "When the eye of day is shut" XXXIV THE FIRST OF MAY, "The orchards half the way" XXXV "When first my way to fair I took" XXXVI REVOLUTION, "West and away the wheels of darkness roll" XXXVII EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES, "These, in the day when heaven was falling" XXXVIII "Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough" XXXIX "When summer’s end is nighing" XL "Tell me not here, it needs not saying" XLI FANCY’S KNELL, "When hands were home from labour"

Cultural references

• "We'll to the woods no more" was set to music in 1922 by John Ireland in his song cycle We'll to the Woods No More.
• We'll to the woods no more is the title of the 1938 translation by Stuart Gilbert of the 1887 French novel Les lauriers sont coupés by Édouard Dujardin.
• John Ireland set No. XXXII, "When I would muse in boyhood", under the title "To Boyhood", to music in We'll to the Woods No More.

References

1. Last Poems at Project Gutenberg