By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Smooth between sea and land’ is the first line of a poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936), who is best-known as the author of A Shropshire Lad (1896). This poem, however, didn’t appear in that volume and indeed remained unpublished until after Housman’s death.
Smooth between sea and land
Is laid the yellow sand,
And here through summer days
The seed of Adam plays.
Here the child comes to found
His unremaining mound,
And the grown lad to score
Two names upon the shore.
Here, on the level sand,
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?