A. E. Housman

Tell me not here

For unknown reasons, this is one of handful of poems that comes into my mind most often. (Maybe just because one so often finds oneself thinking, with more or less exasperation, “tell me not here, it needs not saying . . .”.) Housman is easy to pastiche, but ignore the snobs who think it’s clever to sneer. There are very few poems in English as beautiful as this one — especially the three middle stanzas.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger’s feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.

If you want to read more about Housman, I recommend Tom Stoppard’s play about him, The Invention of Love.