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    A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems: For the Love of Moses
    A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems: For the Love of Moses
    A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems: For the Love of Moses
    Ebook109 pages48 minutes

    A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems: For the Love of Moses

    By A. E. Housman

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    The complete editions of A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems together with an introduction by Keith Hale that ties the poems to their historical root: Housman's love for his friend Moses Jackson.

    .......... Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. watersgreen.wix.com/watersgreenhouse

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWatersgreen House
    Release dateNov 7, 2013
    ISBN9781311517104
    A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems: For the Love of Moses
    Author

    A. E. Housman

    Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was born and brought up in the Bromsgrove region of Worcestershire, adjacent to Shropshire, and was educated locally and at St John's College, Oxford. Though he was a fine scholar, he failed to gin an Honours degree, and spent some years in the Patent Office in London. A series of brilliant academic articles secured him the Professorship of Latin at London University and he went on the become Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. Most famous for A Shropshire Lad (1896), Last Poems was published in 1922, More Poems appeared posthumously and Collected Poems in 1939.

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      Book preview

      A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems - A. E. Housman

      A SHROPSHIRE LAD

      and

      LAST POEMS

      FOR THE LOVE OF MOSES

      A.E. Housman

      With an Introduction by Keith Hale

      © 2021 by Keith Hale

      All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

      BISAC: Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

      BISAC: Poetry / Gay

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Purchase only authorized editions.

      Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative.

      A.E. Housman

      For the Love of Moses

      I 'listed at home for a lancer,

      Oh who would not sleep with the brave?

      I 'listed at home for a lancer

      To ride on a horse to my grave.

      It has been written that most British soldiers in World War I carried a copy of Housman’s A Shropshire Lad in one breast pocket and a photograph of the handsome poet Rupert Brooke in the other. While no doubt hyperbole, the statement may not be too far from the truth. It is certainly true that Housman was the most popular poet of his generation at least among the English youth. British boys schooled in classics, familiar with not only the homosexuality of ancient Greece and Rome but with the bisexuality of Shakespeare and Byron as well, and many having developed their own strong same-sex attachments in the world of the British boarding schools, were a receptive audience for Housman’s poetic odes to lads and, in his case and many of theirs, verse expressing the unrequited longing for one particular lad. In Housman’s case it was his friend Moses Jackson, with whom Housman shared rooms for one year while studying at Oxford. Though Housman was deeply in love with Jackson, it is doubtful the love was consummated. After Oxford, Housman and Jackson also shared lodgings in London together with Jackson’s younger brother Adalbert. It was during this period that Housman and Moses had a falling out, likely due to Housman’s unrelenting passion for his friend. Although Moses remained Housman’s acquaintance for the rest of his life and Housman never stopped loving him, Moses never gave Housman another opportunity to be close to him. Adalbert, on the other hand, remained in Housman’s life, and the two are believed to have had an affair. Although Adalbert was but a pale substitute for the true love of Housman’s life, Housman cared enough about Adalbert that he wrote two poems of tribute for him (poems 41 and 42 from the volume More Poems) after Adalbert died suddenly from typhoid. When Moses too was dying in Canada some time later, Housman rushed his volume Last Poems into print so that Moses would have it before passing.

      Housman hailed from Ludlow, Shropshire, an idyllic setting then and now, and the melancholy of the Shropshire landscape permeates every line of his verse. He was far luckier than homosexual writers who came before him in that his brother Laurence, who would become his editor and compile further editions of his work after Alfred died, also was homosexual and not inclined to censor his brother. Much of Housman’s verse, whether about same-sex longings or other matters, ranges in tone from melancholy to despair. Society’s condemnation of homosexuality together with Moses’ flat rejection of his love seem to have left him with feelings of self-loathing. While painful for the modern gay reader to confront, Housman’s feelings were authentic and true for many homosexuals throughout history. The long history of suicide among persons who are gay is testament to that sad fact, and Housman’s poems too at times express suicidal thoughts. However, after Oscar Wilde was tried, convicted, and sentenced

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