the Light Verse of A. E. Housman
 

When I lived in England, the Housman Society sent be a copy of Unkind to Unicorns, a little sampling of the miserable Latinist's lighter works. It's a shame he didn't write more of the stuff, because it's quite good, and combines the morality of Belloc with the mathematical crispness of Carroll.

Some examples:

Inhuman Henry or
Cruelty to Fabulous Animals

Oh would you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his mourning Mother weeps,
And why his weeping Mother mourns?
He was unkind to unicorns.

No unicorn, with Henry’s leave,
Could dance upon the lawn at eve,
Or gore the gardener’s boy in spring
Or do the very slightest thing.

No unicorn could safely roar,
And dash its nose against the door,
Nor sit in peace upon the mat
To eat the dog, or drink the cat.

Henry would never in the least
Encourage the heraldic beast:
If there were unicorns about
He went and let the lion out.

The lion, leaping from its chain
And glaring through its tangled mane,
Would stand on end and bark and bound
And bite what unicorns it found.

And when the lion bit a lot
Was Henry sorry? He was not.
What did his jumps betoken? Joy.
He was a bloody-minded boy.

The Unicorn is not a Goose,
And when they saw the lion loose
They grew increasingly aware
That they had better not be there.

And oh, the unicorn is fleet
And spurns the earth with all its feet.
The lion had to snap and snatch
At tips of tails it could not catch.

Returning home in temper bad,
It met the sanguinary lad,
And clasping Henry with its claws
It took his legs between its jaws.

‘Down, lion, down!’ said Henry, ‘cease!
My legs immediately release.’
His formidable feline pet
Made no reply, but only ate.

The last words that were ever said
By Henry’s disappearing head,
In accents of indignant scorn,
Were, ‘I am not a unicorn’.

And now you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his Mother mourns and weeps,
And why she also weeps and mourns;
So now be kind to unicorns.

Which I think is about homophobia. Meanwhile, the Belloc influence shows in poems like "the African Lion", which combines Belloc's Cautionary Tales with his Bad Child's Book of Beasts:

To meet a bad lad on the African waste
Is a thing that a lion enjoys;
But he rightly and strongly objects to the taste
Of good and uneatable boys.

When he bites off a piece of a boy of that sort
He spits it right out of his mouth,
And retires with a loud and dissatisfied snort
To the east, or the west, or the south.

So lads of good habits, on coming across
A lion, need feel no alarm
For they know they are sure to escape with the loss
Of a leg, or a head, or an arm.

What I like about these poems - and here's how Housman is more Carroll than Lear - is their silky smoothness. He delivers the poems with matter-of-factness and scientific zing that ape the dryness of a biology textbook, even when the creatures become legendary:

Thomasina and the Amphisbaena or
the Horrors of Horticulture

'In the back back garden, Thomasina,
Did you recently vociferate a squeal?'
'Oh, I trod up an amphisbaena,
And it bit me on the toe and on the heel.
Yes, it bit me (do you know)
With its tail upon the toe,
While it bit me with its head upon the heel!'

'How excessively distracting and confusing.
Pray what, Thomasina, did you do?'
'Oh, I took the garden scissors I was using
And I snipped it irretrievably in two.
And it split with such a scrunch
That I shall not want my lunch.
And if you had heard the noise no more would you.'

'And where, Thomasina, are the sections
Of the foe that you courageously repressed?'
'Oh, they ran away in opposite directions,
And they vanished in the east and in the west.
And the way they made me squint,
It would melt a heart of flint,
And I think that I will go upstairs and rest.'

An amphisbaena is a snake with a head at both ends. I'll end with this poem, which isn't in the short collection I have:

As into the Garden Elizabeth Ran

As into the garden Elizabeth ran
Pursued by the just indignation of Ann,
She trod on an object that lay in her road,
She trod on an object that looked like a toad.

It looked like a toad, and it looked so because
A toad was the actual object it was;
And after supporting Elizabeth's tread
It looked like a toad that was visibly dead.

Elizabeth, leaving her footprint behind,
Continued her flight on the wings of the wind,
And Ann in her anger was heard to arrive
At the toad that was not any longer alive.

She was heard to arrive, for the firmament rang
With the sound of a scream and the noise of a bang,
As her breath on the breezes she broadly bestowed
And fainted away on Elizabeth's toad.

Elizabeth, saved by the sole of her boot,
Escaped her insensible sister's pursuit;
And if ever hereafter she irritates Ann,
She will tread on a toad if she possibly can.

It looked like a toad, and it looked so because / A toad was the actual object it was is the kind of recursive logic I enjoy so much, and the kind that pops up in Carroll's work.

If you have any more light Housman, please share; my book doesn't have everything. I'm also interested in light verse written by poets one doesn't normally associate with levity.

You know his hilarious parody of Longfellow's Excelsior?

The Elephant or The Force of Habit

A tail behind, a trunk in front,
Complete the usual elephant.
The tail in front, the trunk behind,
Is what you very seldom find.
If you for specimens should hunt
With trunks behind and tails in front.
That hunt would occupy you long;
The force of habit is so strong.

'Oh stay,' the maiden said, 'and rest
(For the wind blows from the nor'ward)
Thy weary head upon my breast —
And please don't think me forward.'
A tear stood in his bright blue eye
And gladly he would have tarried;
But still he answered with a sigh:
'Unhappily I'm married.'

Timely post, Orwn. While trolling for wine-snob inspiration, I came across his:

Ale's done more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to Man.

Frank, I'm not sure whether the quote varies from the original on purpose, so forgive me if I'm being dense. I think a valuable alliteration is missing. Here's the whole poem. Which is not exactly light, on the whole, but parts of it are.

Surely it's "malt," not "ale" that does more than Milton can? If I'm remembering correctly, the malt/Milton alliteration is one of the joys of those lines.

**********

And surely Corbett does more than O'Carroll can to get there first with the correct beverage.

Here's a Housman verse not likely to be found in current anthologies. The humor won't pass muster in contemporary culture.

When Adam day by day
xxWoke up in Paradise,
He always used to say
xx"Oh, this is very nice."

But Eve from scenes of bliss
xxTransported him for life.
The more I think of this
xxThe more I beat my wife.

Oh, bother. Of course I misquoted by mistake. I wish it was from over-researching my D&A contribution, but I'm afraid it was due to taking a break from gardening and not wanting to dirty the keyboard any more than I already had. Thanks, Maryann and Chris.

Frank

As Orwn would no doubt have pointed out, the Excelsior parody is 3 stanzas and is included with an illustration in the Unkind To Unicorns collection

The shades of night were falling fast
And the rain was falling faster,
When through an Alpine village passed
An Alpine village pastor:
A youth who bore mid snow and ice
A bird that wouldn't chirrup,
And a banner with a strange device -
"Mrs Winslow's soothing syrup."

And "Mrs Winslow's" was in fact tincture of opium - Excelsior!

Illuminating, Ann. Hadn't realised the syrup was once a real brand
like Fiery Jack's Rubbing Ointment and other delights.

Interestingly, in the Unkind To Unicorns collection only one piece - not one of the best IMHO - would very distantly suggest Housman's serious verse if you didn't know the author. For me two or three lines have trochaic echoes of other poems and fragments.

Now all day the horned herds
Dance to the piping of the birds;
Now the bumble-bee is rife
And other forms of insect life;
The skylark in the sky so blue
Now makes noise enough for two,
And lovers on the grass so green
- Muse, oh Muse, eschew th'obscene.

I love Housman. Didn't he write "And have you caught the Tiger? "
I think he's also the man who wrote this one:

"Hallelujah!" was the final observation
That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane
As she tumbled off the platform in the station
And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Mary Jane, the train is through you,
We will gather up the fragments that remain.

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy
 

I'll paste this in, as it may be unknown to someone. Housman's parody of his beloved Aeschylus:

CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
ALCMAEON: Plying with speed my partnership of legs.
CHORUS: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
ALCMAEON: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
CHORUS: To learn your name would not displease me much.
ALCMAEON: Not all that men desire do they obtain.
CHORUS: Might I then hear at what thy presence shoots.
ALCMAEON: A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that--
CHORUS: What? for I know not yet what you will say.
ALCMAEON: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
CHORUS: Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
ALCMAEON: This house was Eriphyle's, no one else's.
CHORUS: Nor did he shame his throat with shameful lies.
ALCMAEON: May I then enter, passing through the door?
CHORUS: Go chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is very much the safest plan.
ALCMAEON: I go into the house with heels and speed.

CHORUS

Strophe

In speculation
I would not willingly acquire a name
For ill-digested thought;
But after pondering much
To this conclusion I at last have come:
LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.
This truth I have written deep
In my reflective midriff
On tablets not of wax,
Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
For many reasons: LIFE, I say, IS NOT
A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY.
Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
This fact did I discover,
Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
Nor yet Dodona.
Its native ingenuity sufficed
My self-taught diaphragm.

Antistrophe

Why should I mention
The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?
Her whom of old the gods,
More provident than kind,
Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,
A gift not asked for,
And sent her forth to learn
The unfamiliar science
Of how to chew the cud.
She therefore, all about the Argive fields,
Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,
Nor did they disagree with her.
But yet, howe'er nutritious, such repasts
I do not hanker after:
Never may Cypris for her seat select
My dappled liver!
Why should I mention Io? Why indeed?
I have no notion why.

Epode

But now does my boding heart,
Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
A strain not meet for the dance.
Yes even the palace appears
To my yoke of circular eyes
(The right, nor omit I the left)
Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
Garnished with woolly deaths
And many shipwrecks of cows.
I therefore in a Cissian strain lament:
And to the rapid
Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
Resounds in concert
The battering of my unlucky head.

ERIPHYLE (within): O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
CHORUS: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
ERIPHYLE: He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
CHORUS: I would not be reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.
ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct.

Never mind. Something I tried to post here didn't work!

Chris, I think it was 'the horrors of classical translation' (in 1893) rather than Aeschylus that Housman was having so much fun with.

Gail, 'O have you caught the tiger?' is also in Unkind To Unicorns.
Incidentally, in the Hallelujah saga Housman has the rhyme as 'through yer:'. Nice contrast in tone with the decorous 'We will gather up the fragments that remain.'

Thanks for the poems. Some of them I knew, some of them were new. I remember seeing a Complete Works of his one time -- it had everything, his juvenilia included -- but can't remember the title of it.

The Complete Poetical Works of A.E. Housman?

The book you want is edited by a fellow called Archie Burnett and will set you back $250. Jesus wept, as Housman would doubtless have remarked.