'With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.'
A.E Housman
You all seemed to like Housman so much, so here is another one of his great poems, an excerpt from shropshire lad, surely his greatest work. For a while in the 1920s housman was at the peak of his notoriety and fame, and people used to toast each other 'to rose-lipt maidens and lightfoot lads', you can see it in Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and in Out of Africa, where both Denys Finch Hatten and Karen Blixen share a love of Housman, among other things.
I love this poem because it is pure housman, who has this inane ability to capture so much with so few words. I suppose he is like Emily Dickinson in that way, economical but so emotion all at the same time. Sometimes i find poetry can be bogged down in words, and it can seem so heavy and dense. Housman, and others, show that it does not have to be this way, that poetry can be as light as a feather, drifting slowly on a cool breeze.
There is a little melancholy, like to an athlete dying young, but this in a reminiscent nostalgic way. times passed, glorious times past, in which the speaker had many a rose-lipt maiden and many a light food lad among and around him. lost youth, lost everything really, as those rose-lipt girls and light-footed lads and 'sleeping', where the roses have faded. Memory, beauty, youth, life... it all fades out. It is sad? well, yes, of course, undoubtedly. But it is also arbitrary, no matter how much technology improves.
You can't really help it, so enjoy it while you can. Seize the day, and all that jazz.
[foto_decadent]
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