“you’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling / good luck, babe”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, Kipling’s slightly older contemporary has a slightly different take on the layered past:

“On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble,” A.E. Housman

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
    His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
    And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
    When Uricon the city stood:
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
    But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
    At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
    The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
    Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
    Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
    It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
    Are ashes under Uricon.


“Slightly” different. First published in A Shropshire Lad (1896).

---L.

Subject quote, which works for most of Housman tbh, from Good Luck, Babe, Chappell Roan.