A powerful Easter poem by one of the most famous atheist poets The poet A. E. Housman (1859-1936) published just two volumes of poems in his lifetime: A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). Yet he remains one of the most widely-read poets of his era, on the strength […]
Tag: A. E. Housman
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over’
A classic poem of parting A. E. Housman (1859-1936) remains a popular poet with many readers not least because he so poignantly captures the feelings of heartbreak and hopeless love in his work. Technically, his poetry was not innovative: he once named the old ballads and the songs from Shakespeare’s […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘How Clear, How Lovely Bright’
On Housman’s great ‘remorseful day’ poem The poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman (1859-1936) is best-known for his 1896 volume A Shropshire Lad, one of only two volumes of poetry he published during his lifetime. But Housman wrote a number of other wonderful poems which he decided not to […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Tarry, delight, so seldom met’
Housman’s poem about fleeting happiness Happiness doesn’t tend to stick around for long. As Dianna Wynne Jones put it, ‘Happiness isn’t a thing. You can’t go out and get it like a cup of tea. It’s the way you feel about things.’ But as Robert Frost observed, happiness makes up […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Give Me a Land of Boughs in Leaf’
A short analysis of a classic autumnal poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936) Much of A. E. Housman’s poetry requires no analysis or criticism; its meaning is plain enough to the reader. But the following poem, poem VIII from the posthumously published More Poems (1936) – sometimes known by its first […]