Tell Me Not Here, It Needs Not Saying – by Alfred Edward Housman (comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor, follow the poem)
Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.
On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.
On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.
Posses, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger’s feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.
Comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor
Alfred Edward Houseman (1859-1936) was educated at Oxford, and was as queer as a two pound note. He fell in love with a fellow student, one Moses Jackson, a first class science student and athlete. Jackson was, unfortunately for A.E., heartbreakingly heterosexual and Housman’s advances were gently repulsed. It would seem that Housman never really recovered from this rejection and remained in touch and on friendly terms with Jackson until Jackson died some time later.
Houseman enjoyed a hugely distinguished academic career, first as Professor of Latin at University College, London and then at Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his academic life.
Undoubtedly, his poem ‘The Shropshire Lad’ is his most famous work, and within which, as nowhere else, he attempts to talk about and discuss his homosexuality. It must be remembered that he is living at a time of high Victorian respectability, that terrifying era which included the hounding of Oscar Wilde, his incarceration in Reading Gaol and the damnable Marquess of Queensbury. The suggestion, the merest hint of homosexuality could ruin a man’s reputation forever. Cloaked in poetic stanzas however, things might be usefully said out of reach of the rabble and the gutter press.
‘Peccatum illud horribile,inter Christianos non nominandum’
(The sin so horrible not to be named among Christians)
Whoever thought this statement up didn’t know much about Christ’s followers…
Putting a statement like this into Latin gives it an almost Biblical polish and is calculated to suggest to the unwary that it is the word of God. It isn’t, it’s the word of man, of powerful and dangerous forces who make laws to suit the fashion of the moment, and would have us believe their ill-educated, narrow intolerance has real worth. A typical example of this was the British press back in the sixties who represented gays as child molesters and marijuana as addictive as heroin.
Enough.
As you are all undoubtedly aware, ‘The Shropshire Lad’ is not something I can attempt to deal with easily. It is an extraordinarily long poem which is absolutely glorious but will take a considerable bit of sorting out and would require a series of essays over several Sundays. In the interim, I would like to talk about a much shorter poem of Housman’s which has no name and, as is often the case, is known to us simply by its first line-
‘Tell me not here, it needs not saying,…’
Houseman’s poems came to him, he tells us, in fits and starts. Sometimes a verse, sometimes a line or a simple phrase would badger him for weeks until the partly created poem demanded it be written down. Once this was done it would often take him months to flesh out the original idea or phrase.
In the first six lines of this poem , you can almost imagine its author shaking his head in reply to some idiot question being asked of him by either a student or a fellow academic who had just read the poem. This is what I thought at first, but this makes no allowance for the fact that this is Alfred Edward Housman and I should have given him greater credit.
What is really going on here, I believe is that the poet is addressing you and I, the reader on the subject of the creative imagination. He cannot explain to anyone else the effect the countryside has upon him, ‘…the tune the enchantress plays…’, as Autumn’s beauty or the white-flowered Springtime display of hawthorn (known colloquially as ‘May’) enchant the senses.All he knows is that for as long as he can remember, ‘…she and I were long acquainted, and I knew all her ways…’
In the second and third verses Housman enumerates how he ‘…knew all her ways…’ and how important they were to him.
Pine needles create ‘…russet floors…’ the sound of the cuckoo in the forest, and the way Clematis Vitalba, (traveller’s joy) in full Autumn blossom, line the roadsides and bring joy to the passersby.
In the third verse Autumn will slowly turn and vast fields of hay or wheat turn from green to gold as the wind rushes through them ‘…the changing burnish heaves…’
For anyone whose stood and watched a paddock of wheat being moved by the wind, there’s an almost indescribable impression created. It is as if the whole golden ‘…burnish[ed]’ paddock were alive and dancing.
Then the reapers arrive, cut and stook the sheaves where they sit ‘…marshalled under moons of harvest…’ to dry out in the paddock.
Finally the winter winds arrive, strip the trees bare of leaves and everything settles in for Winter.
All of the foregoing, and much more, Housman tells us, went to create his capacity to hear the tune of the enchantress. Housman makes no mention here of his Muse, but that is indeed who his enchantress is. The spirit, the guardian angel who created in him his love of the natural world and his need to set his words to poetry.
Now, he says to us all, all this can be yours but only if you ‘…possess as I possessed a season…’
Housman is getting older, and is content to ‘…resign…’ the countries his imagination owned, to fresh hands, perhaps yours or mine or somebodys.
The last verse splendidly states that ‘…heartless, witless Nature…’ despite the attention that I, Alfred Edward Housman have lavished on you over the years, ‘…will neither care nor know…’ whether you the reader or Housman has been there in search of inspiration. You may love Nature and be inspired by her beauty, and rightly so, but don’t be mistaken. Nature does not love you in return. Nature is, when push comes to shove, indifferent to you. She is there, available to you, with all of her charms on display, for you to swoon and drool over, to provide you with food and drink, the pleasures of the world and the opportunity to astonish the world with your genius. She provides you in the end, with life. What you do with that life is your affair.
This last verse might also be read as Housman’s realization that ‘…what stranger’s feet….may trespass there and go…’ might mean that a better poet than he might draw his inspiration, ‘…may find the meadow…’ from these very fields and forests that Housman ‘owned’ and, as is the nature of things, do a much better job than Housman. Nature accepts these things as a matter of course. Housman sees this as inevitable. We however have a different view. We see Housman’s work as worthwhile and enduring. That is why we are discussing his poetry. It doesn’t matter who comes along afterwards. Housman has earned himself a high place, an honourable place in the history of the creative arts.
classed by the new work culture bought in the late nineties. How could you expect the LC to compete with the SFT, the SGWP, and the HP. And with Universities morphing into technical institutions and vocational colleges, there was clearly no new life being put into the species. It’s like the DODO, well suited to its niche, but the niche has been ‘Nietzsched’.
