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Mr. Housman's: Message

The poem describes a young woman reminiscing about her marriage to her husband who has been away for five months. In three sentences: She recalls how they lived happily together in their village as children, playing and gathering flowers, before marrying at 14 where she was shy and bashful. Now at 16, her husband has been gone for five months on a trip and she misses him, asking if he returns down the river to let her know so she can meet him.

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Falak Chaudhary
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1K views

Mr. Housman's: Message

The poem describes a young woman reminiscing about her marriage to her husband who has been away for five months. In three sentences: She recalls how they lived happily together in their village as children, playing and gathering flowers, before marrying at 14 where she was shy and bashful. Now at 16, her husband has been gone for five months on a trip and she misses him, asking if he returns down the river to let her know so she can meet him.

Uploaded by

Falak Chaudhary
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mr.

Housman's Message
O woe, woe,

People are born and die,

We also shall be dead pretty soon

Therefore let us act as if we were

dead already.

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree

But he dies also, presently.

Some lads get hung, and some get shot.

Woeful is this human lot.

Wow! Woe, etcetera...

London is a woeful place,

Shropshire is much pleasanter.

Then let us smile a little space

Upon fond nature's morbid grace.

Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

BY EZRA POUND

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.


At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever, and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed

You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me.

I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,


And I will come out to meet you

As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

n/a

Source: Selected Poems (1957)

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