here<\/a>) and – first of all – Wilson gets the title of his play from one of Housman’s poems. The play itself takes place in Queens, New York – so to have it called “Ludlow Fair” is mysterious, never fully explained, and it just gets deeper and more interesting the more you look into it. When I was in that play, I needed to really understand what the hell I was talking about, so I looked into “Shropshire Lad” again, but this time I was doing so not to appreciate the poetry but to understand why the hell Lanford Wilson had called his play that, and why on earth my character would remember that poem almost line for line. There is no right answer. Wilson does not provide the answer. It’s like a poem itself, best when not taken too literally. But that was my re-introduction to Housman after reading him in a college poetry class, and I saw so much more there. I was learning how to read poetry, I guess. The rhyme scheme can lull you into thinking that what Housman is talking about is easy<\/i> for him. But that was my mistake.<\/p>\nNow I know that Housman is one of the bleakest of poets, and was obsessed with death and suicide. One of those tragic Victorian homosexual poets – I will also love him forever because when Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for doing OPENLY what everybody else was doing in PRIVATE, and most of his friends had abandoned him – Housman sent him some books in prison. Bless him.<\/p>\n
Housman had an unrequited (mostly) love affair in his youth – and eventually that man left for India, where he eventually married. Housman was devastated. He didn’t start writing poetry for realz until he was 30 years old, very rare. He said later, “I did not begin to write poetry in earnest until the really emotional part of my life was over.”<\/p>\n
OUCH.<\/p>\n
Most of his poems do focus on youth – something he was also obsessed by. He did not like many of the contemporary poets of his day, and struggled to stay apart from them. His idols were William Blake and Shakespeare. Housman was attracted to madness, to mad flights of fancy – to a non-literal approach to things. Yeats loved Housman and it is not hard to see why.<\/p>\n
Reading his stuff now I am truly baffled at my college-girl response to it as light, arch and rather funny verse. I guess I hadn’t had enough heartache of my own yet to perceive Housman’s eternal sadness.<\/p>\n
Here is what is probably his most famous poem. Breathtaking.<\/p>\n
\nLXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff<\/u><\/p>\n
\u00e2\u0080\u0098TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
\nYou eat your victuals fast enough;
\nThere can\u00e2\u0080\u0099t be much amiss, \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis clear,
\nTo see the rate you drink your beer.
\nBut oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
\nIt gives a chap the belly-ache.
\nThe cow, the old cow, she is dead;
\nIt sleeps well, the horned head:
\nWe poor lads, \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis our turn now
\nTo hear such tunes as killed the cow.
\nPretty friendship \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis to rhyme
\nYour friends to death before their time
\nMoping melancholy mad:
\nCome, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.\u00e2\u0080\u0099<\/p>\n
Why, if \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis dancing you would be,
\nThere\u00e2\u0080\u0099s brisker pipes than poetry.
\nSay, for what were hop-yards meant,
\nOr why was Burton built on Trent?
\nOh many a peer of England brews
\nLivelier liquor than the Muse,
\nAnd malt does more than Milton can
\nTo justify God\u00e2\u0080\u0099s ways to man.
\nAle, man, ale\u00e2\u0080\u0099s the stuff to drink
\nFor fellows whom it hurts to think:
\nLook into the pewter pot
\nTo see the world as the world\u00e2\u0080\u0099s not.
\nAnd faith, \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis pleasant till \u00e2\u0080\u0099tis past:
\nThe mischief is that \u00e2\u0080\u0099twill not last.
\nOh I have been to Ludlow fair
\nAnd left my necktie God knows where,
\nAnd carried half way home, or near,
\nPints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
\nThen the world seemed none so bad,
\nAnd I myself a sterling lad;
\nAnd down in lovely muck I\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve lain,
\nHappy till I woke again.
\nThen I saw the morning sky:
\nHeigho, the tale was all a lie;
\nThe world, it was the old world yet,
\nI was I, my things were wet,
\nAnd nothing now remained to do
\nBut begin the game anew.<\/p>\n
Therefore, since the world has still
\nMuch good, but much less good than ill,
\nAnd while the sun and moon endure
\nLuck\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a chance, but trouble\u00e2\u0080\u0099s sure,
\nI\u00e2\u0080\u0099d face it as a wise man would,
\nAnd train for ill and not for good.
\n\u00e2\u0080\u0099Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
\nIs not so brisk a brew as ale:
\nOut of a stem that scored the hand
\nI wrung it in a weary land.
\nBut take it: if the smack is sour,
\nThe better for the embittered hour;
\nIt should do good to heart and head
\nWhen your soul is in my soul\u00e2\u0080\u0099s stead;
\nAnd I will friend you, if I may,
\nIn the dark and cloudy day.<\/p>\n
There was a king reigned in the East:
\nThere, when kings will sit to feast,
\nThey get their fill before they think
\nWith poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
\nHe gathered all the springs to birth
\nFrom the many-venomed earth;
\nFirst a little, thence to more,
\nHe sampled all her killing store;
\nAnd easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
\nSate the king when healths went round.
\nThey put arsenic in his meat
\nAnd stared aghast to watch him eat;
\nThey poured strychnine in his cup
\nAnd shook to see him drink it up:
\nThey shook, they stared as white\u00e2\u0080\u0099s their shirt:
\nThem it was their poison hurt.
\n\u00e2\u0080\u0094I tell the tale that I heard told.
\nMithridates, he died old.<\/p>\n
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<\/i>, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair<\/p>\n