I'll move on then. Here is his fine version of Horace's Diffugere Nives ode. (Housman sets the bar impossible high, perhaps. This strikes me as a very different, but very effective, modern approach.)
The Secret Accretions
Ice, like the shimmering robe that blond blonde lets fall
To her ankles, slips from the field,
And lets the brook break, chuckling, from its grip.
She can't be twenty years old,
She and her friends, sunbathing girls, who go
Dressed in their daring skin,
Parading everlasting youth--or so
They'd have you think. Think again.
Think of how, six months hence, the last sour breath
Of moribund summer's breeze
Will fail, and autumn pummel the grass beneath
Carpets of frost-gilded leaves.
Outside, the seasons mend such damages,
But not so the weather within:
No springtime thaws your limbs, no sun assuages
Once winter gets under your skin.
Onto the very plot on which you'll drop
Your ancestors fell first,
Who yearned for deathless things and tendered hope
And now are shades and dust.
Join them tomorrow? Next month? Who can tell?
Best live today with flair.
The secret accretions of a life led well
Elude the grasping heir.
But learn good judgment now--for all your wit
And pedigree won't budge
When men speak of you in the preterite
And you become the judged.
Stern X, for all his piety, still died,
Nor will ice soon release
Y to her pleading Z, who tried
To rescue her. She stays.
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