Gwern's Reviews > More Poems

More Poems by A.E. Housman
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Jun 08, 2015

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Read from June 06 to 08, 2015

(4.1k words, 49 poems; fulltext available at Wikilivres but unfortunately their version is riddled with typos) A posthumous collection of A.E. Housman's poems. The tone is more conceptual than A Shropshire Lad, with much heavier classical & Christian influence, and not so much emphasis on the easy & flowing rhymes in short lines (the lines are often much longer); overall, I did not get as much out of the poems.

Verses I liked included: II "When Israel out of Egypt came" (last 3 stanzas), XXII "Ho, everyone that thirsteth", XXVI "Good creatures, do you love your lives", XXVII "To stand up straight and tread the turning mill", XLVIII "Parta Quies"; plus an honorable mention of XXXI "Because I liked you better", which while not really great verse on its own, becomes very moving once you know the autobiographical background.
There are two poems in this collection that I really love: VII "Stars, I have seen them fall", and XLV "Smooth between sea and land". Unfortunately, they are fairly famous and much quoted, so I had already read them - rendering reading More Poems redundant.
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06/06/2015 marked as: currently-reading
06/08/2015 marked as: read

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