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 beautifu…