Housmanian Juxtapositions

In this section I put some of Housman’s poems together with other poems from the tradition that seem to me to generate an interesting collocation.

 

Horace, ‘Diffugere nives’ (Odes IV, 7); Housman’s translation thereof (More Poems V); and a translation of the ode that I made in 1978.

[Note: Housman’s translation contains one serious mistake (for details, see my Horace and Housman, pp. 48–50); my schoolboy version contains several…]

 

Heine, ‘Die alten bösen Lieder’; Housman, ‘In valleys of streams of rivers’ (A Shropshire Lad L)

 

Horace, ‘Non ebur neque aureum’ (Odes II, 18); Housman, ‘Hughley Steeple’ (A Shropshire Lad LXI)

[On these two poems, see Horace and Housman, pp. 29–36.]

 

Shelley, ‘A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade’; Housman, ‘The sigh that heaves the grasses’ (Last Poems XXVII)

[On the latter poem, see Horace and Housman, pp. 130–5.]

 

Keats, ‘To Autumn’; Housman, ‘Tell me not here’ (Last Poems XL)

[See Horace and Housman, pp. 135–9]

 

Heine, ‘Unterm weißen Baume sitzend’; Housman, ‘Loveliest of Trees’ (Shropshire Lad II)

[See Horace and Housman, pp. 43–4]