Housmans

MORE POEMS -A. E. Housman -Knopf ($2).

A. E. HOUSMAN-A. S. F. Gow-Macmillan ($1.75).

THE UNEXPECTED YEARS-Laurence Housman-Bobbs-Merrill ($3).

When Laurence Housman (Victoria Regina) published his first book of poems in 1895, his older brother Alfred wrote him: "I had far far rather have my poems mistaken as yours, than your poems mistaken as mine." In his will the solitary author of A Shropshire Lad gave his brother permission "to publish any poems which appear to him to be completed and to be not inferior to the average of my published poems." Last week Laurence offered a selection of 48 lyrics which he found among his distinguished brother's papers, in a volume that was one of the two November choices of the Book-of-the-Month Club. He also offered a rambling autobiographical volume, The Unexpected Years, which, although it told the story of his theatrical successes, presented him as a liberal, good-natured individual, was of literary significance only for its few glimpses of A. E. Housman and of the family background of the brothers. More light on the character of the poet was to be found in a brief sketch, primarily devoted to A. E. Housman's achievements as a scholar, by one of his Cambridge associates. Seventy-two of the 137 pages in A. E. Hoisman are given over to a list of the poet's scattered writing; the remainder describe his early failures in Latin, his work in the Patent Office, his quarrels with other Latinists, his arrogance, acid humor, anti-social habits and desire to erect an imperishable monument to his name.

The verses in More Poems are typical of Housman, give no evidence of lack of finish or failing power. They abound in tight, dry expressions of his skepticism:

To stand up straight and tread the turning mill,

To lie flat and know nothing and be

still,

Are the two trades of man; and which is worse

I know not, but I know that both are ill.

It contains several poems on the War, including one of "dreams of a field afar," in which the poet thinks of his comrades in their graves while he is alive. But they, when I forgot and ran, Remembered and remain. It contains Housman's For My Funeral, which seems likely to endure as long as any of his work, and an epitaph for dead soldiers:

Here dead lie we because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from

which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we

were young.

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