Welcome to Litsy!

“ The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the marketplace;”
— To An Athlete Dying Young, A.E. Housman
My husband recited this from memory the other day.It was a HS poem from an English class.He went to a Jesuit HS in Tampa,FL,which emphasized classics.So my thoughtful son bought him this collection of Housman‘s poems.I had never encountered Housman Reading this I understand why his works appealed to those living during WWI.

I‘ve been slowly working through A.E. Housman‘s poetry collection, A Shropshire Lad, and am finishing it up this morning, which is kind of perfect since it‘s World Poetry Day! I loved A Shropshire Lad—it‘s written simply but with an underlying darkness of death and the beauty of a boy‘s memories of home.

I am five-and-forty so don't get me started! And I cannot find my A.E. Housman book anywhere, so here's the poem I was looking for in The Times anthology again.
#young #poetrymatters @LazyDays

#stars #poetrymatters
Lovely 💕

#twenty-one #novemberbythenumbers @JoeStalksBeck @Tiffy_Reads

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
`Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
`The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.