#ae housman

[nikov]

if equal affection cannot be, LET THE MORE LOVING ONE BE ME.

tolkien (2019) / crush, richard siken / the holiday (2006) / the song of achilles, madeline miller / because i liked you, a.e. housman / the secret history, donna tartt / the more loving one, w. h. auden

#web weaving #words #parallels #rb:words #mine:words #year:2023 #tolkien #crush #Richard siken #the holiday #the song of achilles #Madeline miller #because I liked you #ae housman #the secret history #tsh #donna tartt #the more loving one #wh auden #w.h. auden #unrequited love

[queer-benoit-blanc]

BBC Ghosts and AE Housman Poems

Episode 2.3 / Additional Poems VII / Episode 5.5 / Additional Poems II / Episode 5.5 / Additional Poems IV / Episode 5.5 / More Poems XL / Episode 5.5 / A Shropshire Lad LVII

#bbc ghosts #ghosts #ghosts spoilers #bbc ghosts spoilers #capvers #the captain bbc ghosts #lieutenant havers #the captain #ae housman #housman #a. e. housman

[that-gay-jedi]

Anakin's fall + "To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman

All screenshots from cap-that.com

#anakin skywalker #darth vader #sw rots #revenge of the sith #sw edit #obi wan kenobi #senator palpatine #darth sidious #anakin's fall #order 66 #operation knightfall #gay jedits #star wars #poetry #to an athlete dying young #undescribed images #star wars prequel trilogy #sw prequels #ae housman #something about living gloriously and dying young #and surviving as vader living long enough to become the villain #and the short life of immortal honour vs the longer life of disappointment and shame #he had both

[darknessdrops]

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder. And went with half my life about my ways.

#ae housman #poem #my photograph #colour #my photo edit #me #my younger self

[jessicainlecto]

Part V: 15 More Favourite Poems

I Bargained with Life for a Penny, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Rain, by Raymond Carver

Poems from Dear Sal, by Jeremy Radin

Starlings in Winter, and

In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver

Two Insomnias, and

Let the Lover Be, and

Without Cause, by Rumi

Life, by Charlotte Brontë

Spring and Fall, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Departure, by Louise Glück

A Man Said to the Universe, by Stephen Crane

Short Song, by Justin Quinn

A Shropshire Lad XL, by A.E. Houseman

Idyll, by Siegfried Sassoon

See also Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

#poetry #poem #favpoems #raymond carver #rumi #mary oliver #charlotte bronte #gerard manley hopkins #louise glück #stephen crane #ae housman #siegfried sassoon #justin quinn #jessie b rittenhouse #jeremy radin #dear sal

[voyaging-too]

WIP Amnesty - This Well-nightingaled Place

This is a fic for Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, so it isn't wholly about Oscar Wilde and A.E. Housman, it's more about Stoppard's heavily fictionalised, definitely surreal take on them.

Fog. Twilight. A boat, with two men sitting back to back, gazing statue-still in opposite directions.

The world awakens, the fog is lit by a greenish glow. Sounds of sloshing water, birdsong, faraway churchbells, maybe baa-ing sheep, whatever is necessary to give the impression of a nondescript but idyllic English dawn.

One of the men startles, then the other. They both stand up, the boat rocks, they both hurry to sit down.

A moment of silence as they consider their situation.

One of them moves carefully, and without fully straightening up, turns around, and sits back down, on the other bench. Then the other – they are now on opposite ends of the boat, staring at one another. WILDE is dressed in somewhat ostentatious velvets, HOUSMAN in a deliberately boring suit. They are of a similar, but indeterminate age.

WILDE Mr Housman?

HOUSMAN Yes, I believe so. Mr Wilde?

WILDE Delighted to make your acquaintance again. We’ve met before, but we may not quite have been ourselves, that is to say, not these selves, and not in this place.

HOUSMAN This place?

WILDE Just a moment.

He peers around. Shields his eyes with his hand, looks again.

The light is morning light, but it comes from no particular direction.

Sniffs the air.

Sage and fresh-cut grass.

Licks his finger and holds it up to feel the wind.

The breeze is fresh, and westerly.

Dips his hand in the water to feel the current, then as an afterthought, brings his hand to his mouth and takes a sip, then splashes the remainder on his neck.

The waters of Isis, but clearer than they ought to be.

HOUSMAN Where are we then?

WILDE I would say we are where all writers end up sometime after they’re dead.

HOUSMAN (sceptical) Elysium?

WILDE I’m afraid not. We are in the Public Domain.

HOUSMAN

Why do you reckon?

WILDE I’ve been here before, many times. Mostly miserable biographies, and even more miserable fictionalized biographies, but not exclusively. It is fortunate that my creation, Dorian Grey, stands in for me when the writer merely wants to make a point about beauty or decadence or carnal sin, and I am left in peace. I am only here when they want me in person. A clever young man made an exquisitely drawn comic book about my final days before moving on to woefully mischaracterize Hemingway. I’ve been here in a story about Bosie wearing a green carnation, fighting for my last lost book against a host of batlike tyrants who have stolen the very city of London. There was a radio play of sorts that gave me a government job, impressive magical powers, and a handsome young man in plate armour to grovel at my feet. EMPIRE STAR And of course there was the business with young Mr Stoppard, where unless I am mistaken we last met.

HOUSMAN We did.  It has been a long time.

WILDE It has been no time at all. HOUSMAN Maybe not for you – my sleep is deeper. I am not here unless they sing one of my poems, and even then, I only walk these hills as if in a dream. Most days I am only here to the extent the Shropshire Lad is myself, that is to say, hardly at all.

WILDE So we are in Shropshire?

HOUSMAN The Shropshire I wrote is not the Shropshire you may have been to.

WILDE I have been to your Shorpshire more times than I have been to the Shropshire outside your pages. I have no objection to this Shropshirish, Oxfordish, Arcadia-ish place. It is a little dull, maybe, a little too pastoral, but there are worse places to be.

HOUSMAN What- ah, Reading.

WILDE And Paris, and Naples, and Berneval-le-Grand, and every jewel-bright city one visits as an exile and not as a guest.

Silence.

WILDE Don’t be quite so glum, you are souring the English countryside for me, although I suppose that is the highest and truest aim of all your poetry. To hang murderers from every tree, bury suicides at every crossroads and fill the churchyards with dead heroes, which ultimately seem to be the only sort of hero you really care about. To hell with it, show me what’s in that basket!

Housman looks around, and finds a wicker basket underneath his seat. Brings it out, looks into it, slides the whole thing over to Wilde. He rummages through it.

WILDE Cheese sandwiches. Sponge cake. Strawberries. What are these supposed to be?

He holds up a red metal cylinder.

HOUSMAN (glad to have something to explain) This is an anachronism. A deliberate one at that. I’ve seen prototypes at the Patent Office, but they didn’t start manufacturing stay-tab drinking cans like this until the sixties. Nineteen-sixties, that is.

Wilde still looks nonplussed. Housman takes it from his hand.

HOUSEMAN Here, you push the tab, and you drink from there.

Hands it back. Wilde takes a careful sip from the can, considers it, then takes a longer pull.

WILDE Gin and lemonade, with some spice to it. Pimms, maybe. I suppose absinthe would be too much to ask for.

He picks up a piece of sponge cake, eats it. Housman has not yet touched the food.

HOUSMAN There remains the question of why we’re here.

WILDE Someone clearly thinks we have something of relevance to say to one another. Or at least that my fictionalized, much-distorted form has something to say to your fictionalized, much-distorted form.

HOUSMAN So you have noticed.

WILDE What.

HOUSMAN That you’re not quite yourself.

WILDE I feel like myself, but I cannot do myself justice. I am slower, my words less exact. We are diminished, flattened in the hands of an inferior author.

HOUSMAN A corrupted text?

WILDE Worse. An interpolation.

HOUSMAN We might escape the worst of the corruption by limiting ourselves to things we have said before – things we had the time and means to edit beforehand, whenever possible.

WILDE Agreed. Now, why do you suppose you are here with me?

HOUSMAN I cannot think of anything. Not that I mind this boat on this river in this early morning light…

WILDE But you would much prefer to share it with someone else, or, failing that, much rather spend it alone.

HOUSMAN Quite. I am a textual critic first and a poet only by chance. You are an aesthete first and a poet only by circumstance. We have very little common ground.

WILDE You are too polite to mention that I whole-heartedly believe in a Christ that you find at best slightly ridiculous. I am rude enough to remind you that you declare your devotion to a queen and country that I can no longer bring myself to even jest about.

HOUSMAN So it is going to be…

WILDE There’s nothing else.

HOUSMAN It’s not what I wanted to be remembered for. I do not deny it, but I do not want my life’s work overshadowed by one quirk of my temperament. You too deserve better than to have your name tied permanently to scandal.

WILDE I don’t. I gave my own name to scandal, so now people have something to call it, the poor unnameable thing.

*

And that is how far I got with this story - if you want to get a sense of how it would have continued, I suggest you read all of Housman's poems (there aren't very many, it's three slim volumes), read the Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis, they say anything I could have wanted to say much better than I can say it.

#the invention of love #tom stoppard #oscar wilde #ae housman

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"Shot? so quick, so clean an ending? / Oh that was right, lad, that was brave: / Yours was not an ill for mending, / 'Twas best to take it to the grave."

Read the entire thing here (thanks Project Gutenberg!)

Reblog for a larger sample size!

#repost of this bc i mistyped the title in yesterday's version #i woke up at 5 this morning #reverse jet lag is actually the best #open polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this #a shropshire lad #a. e. housman #ae housman

[sherbertilluminated]

Misread "the men of old had great care for their fields" as "the men of old had great care for their friends." Prof. Housman I am the problem

#ae housman #the invention of love #tom stoppard #rhymes with thaumaturge #i love my classics friends dearly #studia felicitatis

[chiclet-go-boom]

Because I liked you better     Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised     To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us     We parted, stiff and dry; 'Good-bye,' said you, 'forget me.'     'I will, no fear', said I.

If here, where clover whitens     The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you     Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming     The heart no longer stirred, And say the lad that loved you     Was one that kept his word.

                - A.E. Housman

#because i liked you better #ae housman #poetry

[mywingsareonwheels]

I am again wanting to thank Lord Peter Wimsey, Dr Max DeBryn and Endeavour Morse for getting me into Housman. :-)

#poetry #ae housman #lord peter wimsey #max debryn #endeavour morse #dorothy l sayers #itv endeavour #itv inspector morse #ask me no more for fear i should reply #mithridates he died old #falls the remorseful day #aaaaaaaaah

[dry-valleys]

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. AE Housman.

#ae housman #ww1 #world war 1 #poem #poetry

[appointmentwithmryeats]

#ae housman #when i was one and twenty

[avelvetrevolution]

#poetry #doomed love #a.e. housman #it's okay i wasn't planning on feeling good today #housman #ae housman

[finisheachday]

12.11.22

“Ten thousand times I've done my best / And all's to do again.” —A.E. Housman

My memo is done, my job applications are in, I’m halfway through a statutory research assignment, and I’m only just beginning the reading portion of reading week.

#university #studyblr #studying #law school #law student #law studyblr #lawblr #future lawyer #ae housman

[poetictouch]

Dame Judi Dench recites Loveliest Of Trees by A. E. Housman

#A. E. Housman #A.E. Housman #AE Housman #Loveliest Of Trees #Judi Dench #Dame Judi Dench #poem #poetry #Saleh Badrah #Poetictouch

[jessicainlecto]

Part IV: Yet Another 15 Favourite Poems

Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés, by Charles Baudelaire

We lived happily during the war, by Ilya Kaminsky

After great pain, a formal feeling comes, by Emily Dickinson  

You Were You are Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang

I Promise Nothing: Friends Will Part, by A.E. Housman 

Separation, and 

To ________, by W.S. Merwin 

Portrait of a Lady, by T.S. Eliot 

Your Catfish Friend, by Richard Brautigan 

Nostos, and

The Untrustworthy Speaker, by Louise Glück  

#28 from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, by Adrienne Rich 

Meditations in an Emergency, by Cameron Awkward-Rich 

Polaroids, by Charles Wright 

Invitation, by Mary Oliver 

See also Part One, Part Two, Part Three 

#poem #poetry #TS Eliot #ilya kaminsky #emily dickinson #ae housman #ws merwin #richard brautigan #Louise Glück #adrienne rich #cameron awkward rich #charles wright #baudelaire #charles baudelaire #mary oliver #mary jo bang #gratitude #just to be alive #separation #catfish friend #nostos #invitation #favpoems