BOOKS
"The Defeated," a new lyric, concludes with the stern injunction:
Amid rejoicing and song
Remember, my lads, how long,
How deep the innocent trod
The grapes of the anger of God.
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But for the most part his indignation is less savage than morose. It is
seldom that he varies the grim admonition of one of his earliest poems:
Be still, be still, my soul; it
is
but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
His counsels of despair are not those that will rouse youth to march upon
The hell-defended height
Where Virtue beckons plain.
Indeed, in verse which speaks repeatedly of the soldier's task, the trumpet–
calls are few and, as often as not, end on a sour note. The music is apt to
be
elegiac rather. than challenging, or else it carries the ring of a severe
stoicism.
Yet in an evil time Housman's unblinking confrontation of evil has
a peculiar value. And since, whatever battles are lost or won, the personal
life is inevitably touched with tragedy, his honest measure of its shames,
frustrations and defeats holds the solace that comes with an acceptance,
however reluctant, of immedicable griefs and irremediable wrongs. This
effect of his verse is not wholly due to his philosophy.
It
is largely the
result of the technical skill which lifts out of their cruel matrix the
thoughts that plague his mind and the torments that squeeze his heart. The
sure fingering of certain lines and stanzas is unforgettable. The whole
lovely texture of "The Lent Lily," the dreadful final stanza of "Eight
O'clock'' and the liquid second stanza of "Tell me not here, it needs not
saying," the · echoing cry: "0 Queen of air and darkness," the perfect
cadence at the close of "Fancy's Knell," such inimitable lyric& as "I to
my perils'' and "Tarry, delight, so seldom met," the matchless rendering
of "Nous n'irons plus au bois," all these and how many more beauties give
his work the unwithering charm of the poetry on which it was patterned,
while the accent remains unmistakably his own. How true Housman's ear
was, may
be
judged from the fact that even his light verse, which, prop–
erly enough, is not included here, is alive with the same music. In the face
of
these poems alike his scholarly achievements and his private distresses
eeern irrelevant. These are over and done, and those have a dusty odor.
His
art is fresh and firm. His verse endures.
BABETTE DEUTSCH
