A. E. Housman

From Philosopedia

Housman, A(lfred) E(dward) (26 March 1859 - 30 April 1936)

Housman was born in England. He took a "passing degree" from Oxford and received several university appointments, moving permanently to Trinity College in 1911. His most famous work, a book of poems called A Shropshire Lad, has stayed in print since it was first published in 1896. His second, long-awaited volume of poetry, Last Poems, was published in 1922. After he died, his brother put together posthumous collections.

The poem below was a special favorite of Margaret Sanger's:

The laws of God, the laws of man,

He may keep that will and can;

Not I: let God and man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs

Let them mind their own affairs.

Their deeds I judge and much condemn,

Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, say I, and they

Need only look the other way.

But no, they will not; they must still

Wrest their neighbour to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hell-fire.

And how am I to face the odds

Of man's bedevilment and God's?

I, a stranger and afraid

In a world I never made.

They will be master, right or wrong;

Though both are foolish, both are strong.

And since, my soul, we cannot fly

To Saturn nor to Mercury,

Keep we must, if keep we can,

These foreign laws of God and man.

Corliss Lamont stated that Housman, like Hardy, was “disposed to a sombre and disillusioned Humanism.” Housman’s most characteristic theme is the passing of youth and the inevitability of death. Three of his works are “To an Athlete Dying Young,” “When I Was One-and-twenty,” and “With Rue My Heart Is Laden.”

Naturalistic humanists like to quote “The Final Word” from his Shropshire Lad:

Now—for a breath I tarry

Nor yet disperse apart -

Take my hand quick and tell me

What you have in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer:

How shall I help you, say;

Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters

I take my endless way.

Housman’s humor included

When I was born into a world of sin

Praise be to God it was raining gin.

and

It is a fearful thing to be The Pope.

That cross will not be laid on me, I hope.

Leigh W. Rutledge’s Fireside Companion claims that on his deathbed Housman, when he was told a dirty joke by his physician, had replied, “Yes, that’s a good one, and tomorrow I shall be telling it again on the Golden Floor.”

When a memorial window was unveiled in an Abbey chapel by his pupil Enoch Powell, Alan Bostridge sang lyrics from A Shropshire Lad and Alan Bennett gave the address. John Ezard (The Guardian, 18 September 1996), wrote that the Abbey chaplain, the Rev. Jonathan Goodall, “had problems in finding anything suitably Christian to say about the author.” Ezard added that Housman was “one of the bitterest God-haters to wield a pen.”

[Gary Sloan, a retired English professor in Ruston, Louisiana, further documents Housman's godlessness in "A. E. Housman: Poet, Scholar, Atheist" (Freethought Today, September 2006)]

{CE; CL; FFRF; GL; Freethinker, November 1996; TRI; TYD}